Man, he suspected, had a particular genius for complicating things, for creating social hurdles that one must leap or be thought lacking. - Sean Russell

If men were only as wise as they are clever...

Experience taught him that the future was uncertain and one could prepare for it only by learning indifference to disappointment and loss.

They fear others—that is why they sought positions of power. Their greatest dream is to have a King who dances when they move the threads: and for Massenet, to marry his child to the heir of Entonne, and sit his grandson upon the throne. The ordinary desires of those who rise to such positions. In their appetites, they are not men of great originality. Though they will do enormous harm in spite of that.