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  "title": "The Subtle Knife: His Dark Materials 2",
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      "text": "Both the Oblation Board and the Specters of Indifference are bewitched by this truth about human beings: that innocence is different from experience. The Oblation Board fears and hates Dust, and the Specters feast on it, but it's Dust both of them are obsessed by.",
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      "text": "Seems to me the place you fight cruelty is where you find it, and the place you give help is where you see it needed.",
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      "text": "\"You fought for the knife?\" \"Yes, but — \" \"Then you're a warrior. That's what you are. Argue with anything else, but don't argue with your own nature.\" Will knew that the man was speaking the truth. But it wasn't a welcome truth. It was heavy and painful. The man seemed to know that, because he let Will bow his head before he spoke again. \"There are two great powers,\" the man said, \"and they've been fighting since time began. Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.\" \"And now those two powers are lining up for battle. And each of them wants that knife of yours more than anything else. You have to choose, boy. We've been guided here, both of us — you with the knife, and me to tell you about it.\"",
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      "text": "“For a human being, nothing comes naturally,” said Grumman. “We have to learn everything we do.”",
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      "text": "She felt a nausea of the soul, a hideous and sickening despair, a melancholy weariness so profound that she was going to die of it. Her last conscious thought was disgust at life; her senses had lied to her. The world was not made of energy and delight but of foulness, betrayal, and lassitude. Living was hateful, and death was no better, and from end to end of the universe this was the first and last and only truth. Thus she stood, bow in hand, indifferent, dead in life.",
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      "text": "It does not make sense. It cannot exist. It’s impossible, and if it isn’t impossible, it’s irrelevant, and if it isn’t either of those things, it’s embarrassing.",
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      "text": "Lyra sighed; she had forgotten how roundabout Scholars could be. It was difficult to tell them the truth when a lie would have been so much easier for them to understand.",
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      "text": "\"You have a strange way about you, Dr. Grumman. You ever spend any time among the witches?\" \"Yes,\" said Grumman. \"And among academicians, and among spirits. I found folly everywhere, but there were grains of wisdom in every stream of it. No doubt there was much more wisdom that I failed to recognize. Life is hard, Mr. Scoresby, but we cling to it all the same.\" \"And this journey we're on? Is that folly or wisdom?\" \"The greatest wisdom I know.\" \"Tell me again what your purpose is. You're going to find the bearer of this subtle knife, and what then?\" \"Tell him what his task is.\" \"And that's a task that includes protecting Lyra,\" the aeronaut reminded him. \"It will protect all of us.\"",
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      "text": "Lord Asriel is just a man, with human power, no more than that. But his ambition is limitless. He dares to do what men and women don't even dare to think.",
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