# Quote — Gene Wolfe, The Citadel of the Autarch

> There is no category of human activity in which the dead do not outnumber the living many times over. Most beautiful children are dead. Most soldiers, most cowards. The fairest women and the most learned men—all are dead. Their bodies repose in caskets, in sarcophagi, beneath arches of rude stone, everywhere under the earth. Their spirits haunt our minds, ears pressed to the bones of our foreheads. Who can say how intently they listen as we speak, or for what word?

- Author: [Gene Wolfe](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe.md)
- Book: [The Citadel of the Autarch](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe/the-citadel-of-the-autarch.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_New_Sun#The_Citadel_of_the_Autarch_(1983)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe/the-citadel-of-the-autarch/there-is-no-category

## More from this book

> When a client is driven to the utmost extremity, it is warmth and food and ease from pain he wants. Peace and justice come afterward. Rain symbolizes mercy and sunlight charity, but rain and sunlight are better than mercy and charity. Otherwise they would degrade the things they symbolize.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe/the-citadel-of-the-autarch/when-a-client.md)

> The sand in my boots was sacred sand because it came from a beach of sacred sand. The cenobites treasured up the relics of the sannyasins because the sannyasins had approached the Pancreator. But everything had approached and even touched the Pancreator, because everything had dropped from his hand. Everything was a relic. All the world was a relic. I drew off my boots, that had traveled with me so far, and threw them into the waves that I might not walk shod on holy ground.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe/the-citadel-of-the-autarch/the-sand-in-my-boots.md)

> You were a danger to them unless you were terribly punished because they might otherwise someday be tempted. A judge or a jailer who has no crime of his own is a monster, alternately purloining the forgiveness that belongs to the Increate alone and practicing a deathly rigor that belongs to no one and nothing.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe/the-citadel-of-the-autarch/you-were-a-danger.md)