There’s more magic in a well-aimed three-talent ball than in all the wizards of Egypt. - L. Sprague de Camp

Not even a god, they say, could be at once wise and in love.

I have met Master Parthenius," growled Thorolf. "He is the sort to whom, if he were drowning, I should be happy to throw an anvil.

I fear me that the eighteenth century, which I have idealized all these years, never really existed. The real one was far dirtier, more narrow-minded, brutal, orthodox, and superstitious than I could have ever conceived without seeing it.