Some quotes I like...

Portia . The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; 
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. 
'Tis mighty in the mightiest; 
It becomes the thronèd monarch better than his crown. 
His scepter shows the force of temporal power, 
The attribute to awe and majesty, 
Wherein sit the dread and fear of kings; 
But mercy is above this scepter'd sway; 
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings, 
It is an attribute of God himself, 
And earthy power doth then show likest God's 
When mercy seasons justice.


CALIBAN . Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. 
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments 
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices 
That, if I then had waked after long sleep, 
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming, 
The clouds methought would open and show riches 
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked, 
I cried to dream again.

No intellect is needed to see those figures who wait beyond the void of death -- every child is aware of them, blazing with glories dark or bright, wrapped in authority older than the universe. They are the stuff of our earliest dreams, as of our dying visions. Rightly we feel our lives guided by them, and rightly too we feel how little we matter to them, the builders of the unimaginable, the fighters of wars beyond the totality of existence.

The difficulty lies in learning that we ourselves encompass forces equally great. We say, "I will," and "I will not," and imagine ourselves (though we obey orders of some prosaic person every day) our own masters, when the truth is that our masters are sleeping. One wakes within us and we are ridden like beasts, though the rider is but some hitherto unguessed part of ourselves.


-from "Shadow and Claw", by Gene Wolfe