The quality of mercy is not strain'd
It droppeth as the gently rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath; it is twice blest'
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes;
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest. . . .
--William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Vashon Literature Repository

Again we have let another Chaplain/Psychiatrist kill tens of thousands of us--Islander and Merman alike. This new C/P , Raja Flattery, calls himself "the Director," but he will see. We have kissed the ring and bared the throat for the last time.
--First Shadowbox broadcast, 5 Bunratti 493

Fire smolders in a soul more surely than it does under ashes.
--Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire

Human hybernation is to animal hibernation as animal hibernation is to constant wakefulness. In its reduction of life processes, hybernation approached absolute stasis. It is nearer death than life.
--Dictionary of Science, 155th edition.

That is the difference between gods and men--gods do not murder their children. They do not exterminate themselves.
--Hali Ekel, from Journals of Pandoran pioneers

Right is self-evident. It needs no defense, just good witness.
--Ward Keel, Chief Justice (deceased)

Worship isn't really love. An object of worship can never be itself. Remember that people love people and vice versa. People fear gods.
--Dwarf MacIntoch, Kelpmaster, Current Control

When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, "A shower is coming," and so it comes to pass. And when you see the south wind blow, you say, "There will be a scorching heat," and so it comes to pass. You hypocrites! You know how to judge the face of the sky and of the earth; but how is it that you do not judge this time?
--Jesus

The things that people want and the things that are good for them are very different...Great art and domestic bliss are mutually incompatible. Sooner or later, you'll have to make your choice.
--Arthur C. Clarke

Since every object is simply the sum of its qualities, and since qualities exist only in the mind, the whole objective universe of matter and energy, atoms and stars does not exist except as a construction of the consciousness, an edifice of conventional symbols shaped by the senses of man.
--Lincoln Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein

Even if they, with minds overcome by greed, see no evil in the destruction of a family, see no sin in the treachery to friends, shall we not, who see the evil of destruction, shall we not refrain from this terrible deed?
--from Zavatan Conversations with the Avate, Queets Twisp, elder

Mankind owns four things
that are no good at sea;
rudder, anchor, oars
and the fear of going down.
--Antonio Machado

Evil is in the eye of the beholder.
--Spider Nevi, special assistant to the Director

And out of the ground made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
--Christian Book of the Dead

To think of a power means not only to use it, but above all to abuse it.
--Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire

Remember that I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your master.
--Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Vashon Literature Repository

I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. . . I look upon the judgement of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, and the rise and fall of beliefs as but traces left by the four seasons.
--Buddha

Of everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and of him to whom they have entrusted much, they will demand the more.
--Jesus

What then shall we do?
--Leo Tolstoy

Intervention into destiny by god or man requires the most delicate care.
--Dwarf MacIntosh, Kelpmaster, Current Control

Do you know how hard it is to think like a plant?
--Dwarf MacIntosh, Kelpmaster, Current Control (from Holovision Nightly News, 3 Jueles 493)

You have been educated in judgement, which is the essence of worship. Judgement always occurs in the past. It is past-thinking. Will, free or otherwise, is concerned with the future. Thinking is the performance of the moment, out of which you use your judgement to modulate will. You are a convection center through which past prepares future.
--Dwarf MacIntosh, Kelpmaster, from Conversations with the Avata

Mercenary captains either are or are not skilful soldiers. If they are, you cannot trust them , for they will always seek to gain power for themselves either by oppressing you, the master, or by oppressing others against your wishes.
--Machiavelli, The Prince

The mind at ease is a dead mind.
--Dwarf MacIntosh, Kelpmaster, Current Control

Canon in D
--Pachelbel

In conscience you find the structure, the form of consciousness, the beauty.
--Kerro Panille, "Translations from the Avata," The Histories

Anyone who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it may expect to be destroyed by it.
--Machiavelli, The Prince

The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.
--T. Robbins, from A Literary Encyclopedia of the Atomic Age

Manipulating the kelp electronically is like making a marionette out of a quadriplegic. The trick becomes keeping it a quadriplegic.
--Raja Flattery, from "Current Control from the Skies," Holovision feature

Short-term expedients always fail in the long term.
--Dwarf MacIntosh

The gods do not limit men. Men limit men.
--T. Robbins, A Literary Encyclopedia of the Atomic Age

Men are moved by two principal things--by love and by fear. Consequently, they are commanded as well by someone who wins their affection as by someone who arouses their fear. Indeed, in most instances the one who arouses their fear gains more of a following and is more readily obeyed than the one who wins their affection.
--Machiavelli, The Prince

Consciousness manifests itself indubitably in man and therefore, glimpsed in this one flash of light, it reveals itself as having a cosmic extension and consequently as being aureoled by limitless prolongations in space and time.
--Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hymn of the Universe

We Islanders understand current and flow. We understand that conditions and time change. To change, then, is normal.
--Ward Keel, The Notebooks

Thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
--Christian Book of the Dead

Kill therefore with the sword of wisdom the doubt born of ignorance that lies in your heart. Be one in self-harmony and arise, great warrior, arise.
--from Zavatan Conversations with the Avata, Queens Twisp, elder

We Islanders understand current and flow. We understand that conditions and times change. To change, then, is normal.
--Ward Keep, The Apocryphal Notebooks

Power, like any other living being, will go to infinite lengths to maintain itself.
--Ward Keep, The Apocryphal Notebooks

Anyone who threatens the mind or its symbolizing endangers the matrix of humanity itself.
--Ward Keep, The Apocryphal Notebooks

The new ruler must inevitably distress those over whom he establishes his rule. So it happens that he makes enemies of all those whom he has injured in occupying the new principality, and yet he cannot keep the friendship of those who have set him up.
--Machiavelli, The Prince

We're more than our ideas.
--Prudence Lon Weygand, M.D., number five original crew, Voidship Earthling.

I am afraid, too, like all my fellow-men, of the future too heavy with mystery and too wholly new, towards which time is driving me.
--Pierre Tielhard de Chardin, Hymn of the Universe, the Zavatan Collection

Not by refraining from action does one attain freedom from action. Not by mere renunciation does one attain supreme perfection.
--from Zavatan Conversations with the Avata, Queets Twisp, elder

Roots and wings. But let the wings grow roots and the roots fly.
--Juan Ramon Jimenez

To be conscious, you must surmount illusion.
--Prudence Lon Weygand, M.D., number five, original crew member, Voidship Earthling

Feed men, then ask of them virtue.
--Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

If you think that vision is greater than action, why do you enjoin upon me the terrible action of war?
--from Zavatan Conversations with the Avata, Queets Twisp, elder

While the fat and flesh cleaving to the flame are devoured by it, you who cleave to it are yet alive.
--Zohar: The Book of Splendor

That's all Ship ever asked of us, that's all WorShip was meant to be; find our own humanity and live up to it.
--Kerro Panille, from The Clone Wars

Therefore, if it was more necessary in those days to satisfy the soldiers than the people, this was because the soldiers had more power than the people. Today . . .all rulers find it more necessary to satisfy the people than the soldiers, because the former now have more power than the latter.
--Machiavelli, The Prince

What happiness could we ever enjoy if we killed our own kinsmen in battle?
--Bhagavad-Gita

Reveries, mad reveries, lead life.
--Gaston Bachelard

I will this morning climb up in spirit to the high places, bearing with me the hopes and the miseries of my mother; and there. . .upon all that in the world of human flesh is now about to be born or to die beneath the rising sun I will call down the Fire.
--Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hymn of the Universe

Increase the number of variables, but the axioms themselves never change.
--Algebra II

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight. . .
--Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach"

Dark, unfeeling and unloving powers determine human destiny.
--John Wisdom

There must be a threshold of consciousness beyond which a conscious being takes on the attributes of God.
--Umbilicus crew member, Voidship Earthling, from The Histories

One who withdraws oneself from actions, but ponders on their pleasures in the heart, such a one is under a delusion and is a false swimmer of the Way.
--Zavatan Conversations with Avata, Queets Twisp, elder

Consciousness, the gift of the serpent.
--Raja Lon Flattery, number five model, Shiprecords

The is is holy and the void is home.
--Huston Smith

If you take any activity, any art, any discipline, any skill, take it and push it as far as it will go, push it to the wildest edge of edges, then you force it into the realm of magic.
--T. Robbins

To comfort a person with his shadow is to show him his own light.
--Carl Jung

Ferdinand of Aragon. . . has always planned and executed great things which have filled his subjects with wonder and admiration and have kept them preoccupied. One action has grown out of another with such rapidity that there never has been time in which men could quietly plot against him.
--Machiavelli, The Prince

So many things fail to interest us, simply because they don't find in us enough surfaces on which to live, and what we have to do then is to increase the number of planes in our mind, so that a much larger number of themes can find a place in it at the same time.
--Jose Ortega y Gasset