If you listen to dogs barking you will go deaf without learning anything.

I have called on the Goddess and found her within myself

I am dedicated to the belief that it is God's will that all men should strive for wisdom in themselves, not look to it from some other. Babes, perhaps, must have their food chewed for them by a nurse, but men may drink and eat of wisdom for themselves.

Rome was mud and smoky skies; the rank smell of the Tiber and the exotically spiced cooking fires of a hundred different nationalities. Rome was white marble and gilding and heady perfumes; the blare of trumpets and the shrieking of market-women and the eternal, sub-aural hum of more people, speaking more languages than Gaius had ever imagined existed, crammed together on seven hills whose contours had long ago disappeared beneath this encrustation if humanity. Rome was the pulsing heart of the world.

Arthur, their young king, like a hero out of legend.

If you listen to dogs barking you will go deaf without learning anything.

Some knowledge and some song and some beauty must be kept for those days before the world again plunges into darkness.