“The monk's ultimate goal is direct union with the Godhead. But to aim at that goal is to miss it altogether. His task is to rid himself of ego so that consciousness, once its usual discordant mental content is dumped out of it through ritual prayer and meditation, may experience nonself as a living formlessness and emptiness into which God may come, if it please Him to come.”

“There seems to be at least one common denominator to all intelligent life: it was bipedal and bimannual. Four legs was the most practical number for any animal on any planet, and it seems that nature has nothing else to work with. When she decided to give intelligence to a species, she taught him to stand on his hind legs, freeing his forefeet to become tools of his intellect. And she usually taught him by making him use his hands to climb. As a Cophian biologist had said, "Life first tries to climb a tree to get to the stars. When it fails, it comes down and invents the high-C drive.”

“Dom Paulo had not expected to convince him. But it was with a heavy heart that the abbot noticed the plodding patience with which the thon heard him through; it was the patience of a man listening to an argument which he had long ago refuted to his own satisfaction.”

“You heard him say it? 'Pain's the only evil I know about.' You heard that?"The monk nodded solemnly."And that society is the only thing that determines whether an act is wrong or not? That too?""Yes.""Dearest God, how did those two heresies get back into the world after all this time? Hell has limited imaginations down there. 'The serpent deceived me, and I did eat.”

“... for no change comes calmly over the world...”

“Ask for an omen, then stone it when it comes -- de essentia hominum.”

“Tell me, how would you feel if everyone screamed and ran when they saw you coming, or hunted you down like a criminal? How long would you sanity last?"..."...Tell me something else, if all the world was blind save one man, wouldn't the world be inclined to call that man's sight a hallucination? And the man with eyes might even come to agree with the world.”