Let every act be just, and proper, and beneficial.

Translator Dlique was saying, very earnestly, “Eggs are so inadequate, don't you think? I mean, they ought to be able to become anything, but instead you always get a chicken. Or a duck. Or whatever they're programmed to be. You never get anything interesting, like regret, or the middle of the night last week.

When one is the agent of order and civilisation in the universe, one doesn't stoop to negotiate. Especially with nonhumans.

It's the people without the money and the power, who desperately want to live, for those people small things aren't small at all.

Things happen the way they happen because the world is the way it is.

Without feelings insignificant decisions become excruciating attempts to compare endless arrays of inconsequential things. It's just easier to handle those with emotions.

What, after all, was the point of civilisation if not the well-being of citizens?