For himself, he had never thought it would be this bad. He had stopped remembering her, except maybe ten times a day, but now she came to him and the… - Poul Anderson

At least we can put a little sense into life."
"I don't know whether we do or whether we find what was always there," he replied. "Nor do I care greatly. To me, the important thing is that the purpose—order, beauty, spirit, whatever you want to call it—does exist.

You know what they say about bold spacemen never becoming old spacemen.

No, the only way to sanity—to survival—is to abandon class prejudice and race hate altogether, and work as individuals. We’re all...well, Earthlings, and subclassification is deadly. We all have to live together, and might as well make the best of it.