An opinion can be argued with; a conviction is best shot. The logical end of a war of creeds is the final destruction of one, and Salammbo is the classical text-book instance.

Suppose we were (as we might be) an influence, an idea, a thing intangible, invulnerable, without front or back, drifting about like a gas? Armies were like plants, immobile, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head. We might be a vapour, blowing where we listed Ours should be a war of detachment. We were to contain the enemy by the silent threat of a vast, unknown desert

There is an ideal standard somewhere and only that matters and I cannot find it. Hence the aimlessness.

Cling tight to your sense of humour. You will need it every day.

We lived always in the stretch or sag of nerves, either on the crest or in the trough of waves of feeling.

The Beduin could not look for God within him: he was too sure that he was within God.

The dreamers of the day are dangerous... for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.