A world of life and mystery, a world of splendor and striving and wistful beauty. Yes, it was good to live, and even if he was now to join the sun in… - Poul Anderson

Do you know," said Maclaren, "there is one sin which is punished with unfailing certainty, and must therefore be the deadliest sin in all time. Stupidity.

Aghast, Tauno exclaimed, “but this is frightful!”
“Oh? Many would count it glorious good fortune.”
His eye stabbed at hers. “Would you?”
“Well… No.”
“Locked among bleak brick walls for all her days; shorn, harshly clad, ill-fed, droning through her nose at God while letting wither that which God put between her legs; never to know love, children about her, the growth of home and kin, or even wanderings under apple trees in blossom time.…”
“Tauno, it is the way to eternal bliss.”
“Hm. Rather would I have my bliss now, and then the dark. You, too—in your heart—not so?—whether or not you have said you mean to repent on your deathbed. Your Christian Heaven seems to me a shabby place to spend forever.”

So why was a civilian going armed? It bespoke a degree of lawlessness that fitted ill with a technological society.