The thoughts of all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be anything other than a slave to the darkness that comes before?

Consequences lost all purchase when they became mad. And desperation, when pressed beyond anguish, became narcotic.

Beliefs are the foundation of actions. Those who believed without doubting, he would say, acted without thinking. And those who acted without thinking were enslaved.

To indulge it is to breed it. To punish it is to feed it. Madness knows no bridle but the knife.

Doubt begets understanding, and understanding begets compassion. Verily, it is conviction that kills.

Here we find further argument for Gotagga’s supposition that the world is round. How else could all men stand higher than their brothers?

There was such a difference, he thought, between the beauty that illuminated, and the beauty that was illuminated.