“By the craggy hill-side,Through the mosses bare,They have planted thorn-treesFor pleasure here and there.If any man so daringAs dig them up in spite,He shall find their sharpest thornsIn his bed at night.”

“We shall sleep on moss for many nights, till the beasts of the body come to tear our body. We have no bed now, save the moss,and no future, save the beasts.”

“As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers and the sharpest thorns, as the heavens are sometimes overcast—alternately tempestuous and serene—so is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasure and pain.”

“So close. He'd get there. Not today, but soon. He had a task to accomplish here, and the sooner he completed it, the sooner he could rejoin his regiment. He wasn't stopping for anything.Except sheep. Blast it. It would seem they were stopping for sheep.A rough voice said, "I'll take care of them."Thorne joined their group. Bram flicked his gaze to the side and spied his hulking mountain of a corporal shouldering a flintlock rifle."We can't simply shoot them, Thorne."Obedient as ever, Thorne lowered his gun. "Then I've a cutlass. Just sharpened the blade last night.""We can't butcher them, either."Thorne shrugged. "I'm hungry."Yes, that was Thorne--straightforward, practical. Ruthless.”

“These nights are endless, and a man can sleep through them,or he can enjoy listening to stories, and you have no needto go to bed before it is time. Too much sleep is onlya bore. And of the others, any one whose heart and spiriturge him can go outside and sleep, and then, when the dawn shows,breakfast first, then go out to tend the swine of our master.But we two, sitting here in the shelter, eating and drinking,shall entertain each other remembering and retellingour sad sorrows. For afterwards a man who has sufferedmuch and wandered much has pleasure out of his sorrows.”

“Sing and rejoice ye children of the day and the light; for the Lord is at work in this thick night of darkness that may be felt: and the Truth doth flourish as the rose, and lilies do grow among the thorns and the plants atop the hills, and upon them the lambs doth skip and play.”