"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air."
"It is not against reason, said the Englishman, to prefer the destruction of the world to a scratch on your finger – how much easier to understand the same price for the gash in your soul."
"Self-pity, while it should be accorded due respect, is the greatest of all acids to the human soul."
"Do you have any idea how mad you sound?’‘Indeed I do. I have in moments of doubt considered the question of my sanity.’ (...)‘And?’‘Then I consider what a piece of work is man. How defective in reason, how mean his facilities, how ugly in form and movement, in action how like a devil, in apprehension how like a cow. The beauty of the world? The paragon of animals? To me the quintessence of dust."
"We are all cynics now, I suppose, and even a mewling infant knows that to save a life is to make an eternal enemy."
"Feeling sorry for yourself is a universal solvent of salvation."
"Hypocrites,’ replied Cale, ‘I’ve come across a lot of them recently. I mean by that I understand now how many of them there are."
"In such a beast as this..." (he means the army)"...it was the collective power that went, collapsing like a long-exhausted animal, at once falling under its own weight as much as that of its enemy. It was a collective death and not a matter of bravery or even strength, and once it was down it was finished as a battle."
"...the heart of a child can take forty-nine blows before it’s damaged for ever and what’s done can never be undone."
"Many are called, few are chosen."
"The battle had been as hideous as you might expect between one side who were simply not afraid to die and another who regarded death as merely a door to the eternal life."