In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was.

He believed in God even if he was doubtful of men's claims to know God's mind. But that a God unable to forgive was no God at all.

See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire.

Men of God and men of war have strange affinities.

and for a moment he held out his hands as if to steady himself or as if to bless the ground there or perhaps as if to slow the world that was rushing away and seemed to care nothing for the old or the young or rich or poor or dark or pale or he or she. Nothing for their struggles, nothing for their names. Nothing for the living or the dead.

Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals come easily.

You have to carry the fire." I don't know how to." Yes, you do." Is the fire real? The fire?" Yes it is." Where is it? I don't know where it is." Yes you do. It's inside you. It always was there. I can see it.