It takes a lot to wound a man without illusions.

Death, after all, is the common expectation from birth. Neither heroes nor cowards can escape it.

Nothing is more pleasing and engaging than the sense of having conferred benefits. Not even the gratification of receiving them.

Youth is no less vulnerable, by the very quality it has of making the heart ache that beholds and has lost it.

I have always known that the best of the Saracens could out-Christian many of us Christians.

If ever you do go back, what is it you want of Evesham?" "Do I know? [...] The silence, it might be ... or the stillness. To have no more running to do ... to have arrived, and have no more need to run. The appetite changes. Now I think it would be a beautiful thing to be still.

Truth can be costly, but in the end it never falls short of value for the price paid.