“We are not accustomed to threats here,” Lorivade declared. — Robert Silverberg

"When you poison a man in order to sell him the antidote, you don’t boast about it afterward to the victim!"

"The higher powers reward us most tenderly by their absence from our lives."

"May I be struck dead for saying this if I don’t mean it with all my heart: I wish the Lord and all his prophets would disappear and leave us alone. We’ve had enough religion for one season."

"It is peaceful here. I am far from the fishmongers and the drainers and the wine-peddlers and all those others whose songs of commerce clang in the streets of cities. A man can think; a man can look within his soul, and find those things that have been the shaping of him, and draw them forth, and examine them, and come to know himself."

"It did not seem at all improbable to McCulloch now. The infinite fullness of time brings about everything, he thought: even intelligent lobsters, even a divine octopus."

"Knowledge never injures the soul. It only purges that which encrusts and saps the soul."