So now the tale is done. What moral? There was in the abbey a learned — Darrell Schweitzer

"“Stand here and look,” he said. “Look, and you’ll see the Earth as it always was, even before the death of The Goddess. I come here sometimes to reflect, when the toils of my station are more than I can bear. I come out here to where it seems that mankind and all his works have made no more impression on the Earth than the passing shadow of a cloud. I told myself not to worry, to face what I must face with courage and dignity, for nothing matters ultimately. I come out here to watch the sun rise.”"

"Men called me a philosopher once, but as the years burdened me further I cared less and less for the pressing questions of astronomy and geomancy and metaphysics and the like. They had been pressing since long before I was born, and I knew they would continue to be so as long as there were two students left to argue over the difference between the real and the ideal."

"This place was not divine. It was enchanted, which was a different thing altogether."

"I listened to all this with the dull incomprehension of a pig in the slaughterhouse overhearing the talk of two butchers."

"“Have I come to a second Bedlam? Are you all mad here?” “Madness is the order of the day,” the lord replied. “Even God is mad. We follow divine example.”"

"Nothing frightens a miser more than the prospect of not getting paid."