Li-Tsung of Krasna would have told him to live at all costs, sacrifice all the others, to save himself for… — Poul Anderson
Li-Tsung of Krasna would have told him to live at all costs, sacrifice all the others, to save himself for his planet and the Fellowship. But there were limits. You didn’t have to accept Dave’s Calvinism—though its unmerciful God seemed very near this dead star—to swallow the truth that some things were more important than survival. Than even the survival of a cause.
Maybe I’m trying to find out what those things are, he thought confusedly.
p. 92Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
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I do not think the coerced mind ever really learns an art.
p. 20
I’m afraid I’m not a convert or anything. I still see the same blind cosmos governed by the same blind laws. But suddenly it matters. It matters terribly, and means something. What, I haven’t figured out yet. I probably never will. But I have a reason for living, or for dying if need be. Maybe that’s the whole purpose of life: purpose itself. I can’t say. But I expect to enjoy the world a lot more.
p. 129
Then they died.
And other men came after them. Wars flamed up and burned out; the howling peoples dwelt in smashed cities and kindled their fires with books.
p. 1
