# Walter M. Miller Jr.

- Quotes: 29
- Author page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr

## Books

- [A Canticle for Leibowitz](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr/a-canticle-for-leibowitz.md) — 29 quotes

## Recently added quotes

> From the lightning and the tempest,
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> O Lord, deliver us.
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> From the scourge of the earthquake,
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> O Lord, deliver us.
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> From plague, famine, and war,
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> O Lord, deliver us.
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> From the place of ground zero,
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> O Lord, deliver us.
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> From the rain of the cobalt,
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> O Lord, deliver us.
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> From the rain of the strontium,
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> O Lord, deliver us.
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> From the fall of the cesium,
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> O Lord, deliver us.
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> From the curse of the Fallout,
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> O Lord, deliver us.
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> From the begetting of monsters,
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> O Lord, deliver us.
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> From the curse of the Misborn,
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> O Lord deliver us.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr/a-canticle-for-leibowitz/from-the-lightning.md)

> The Poet could not remember ever fearing death, but he had often suspected Providence of plotting the worst for him as to the manner of his dying when the time came to go. He had expected to rot away. Slowly and not very fragrantly. Some poetic insight had warned him that he would surely die a blubbering leprous lump, cravenly penitential but impenitent. Never had he anticipated anything so blunt and final as a bullet in the stomach, and with not even an audience at hand to hear his dying quips. The last thing they had heard him say when they shot him was: "Oof!" — his testament for posterity. Ooof!

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr/a-canticle-for-leibowitz/the-poet-could.md)

> But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr/a-canticle-for-leibowitz/but-neither-infinite.md)

> Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk: Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America — burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again. Are we doomed to it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing? This time, it will swing us clean to oblivion, he thought.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr/a-canticle-for-leibowitz/listen-are-we-helpless.md)

> He was a very dispirited Poet. He had never expected the world to act in a courteous, seemly, or even sensible manner, and the world had seldom done so; often he had taken heart in the consistency of its rudeness and stupidity. But never before had the world shot the Poet in the abdomen with a musket. This he found not heartening at all.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr/a-canticle-for-leibowitz/he-was-a-very.md)

> Encounters between strangers in the desert, while rare, were occasions of mutual suspicion, and masked by initial preparations on both sides for an incident that might prove either cordial or warlike.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr/a-canticle-for-leibowitz/encounters-between-strangers.md)

> Brother Francis Gerard of Utah might never have discovered the blessed documents, had it not been for the pilgrim with girded loins who appeared during that young novice's Lenten fast in the desert.
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> Never before had Brother Francis actually seen a pilgrim with girded loins, but that this one was the bona fide article he was convinced as soon as he had recovered from the spine-chilling effect of the pilgrim's advent on the far horizon, as a wiggling iota of black caught in a shimmering haze of heat.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr/a-canticle-for-leibowitz/brother-francis-gerard.md)

> She watched him with cool green eyes and smiled innocently. The eyes were alert with wonder, curiosity, and — perhaps something else — but she could apparently not see that he was in pain. There was something about her eyes that caused him to notice nothing else for several seconds. But then he noticed that the head of Mrs. Grales slept soundly on the other shoulder while Rachel smiled. It seemed a young shy smile that hoped for friendship. He tried again.
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> "Listen, is anyone else alive? Get —"
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> Melodious and solemn came her answer: "listen is anyone else alive — " She savored the words. She enunciated them distinctly. She smiled over them Her lips reframed them when her voice was done with them. It was more than reflexive imitation, he decided. She was trying to communicate something. By the repetition, she was trying to convey the idea: I am somehow like you.
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> But she had only just now been born.
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> And you're somehow different, too, Zerchi noticed with a trace of awe.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr/a-canticle-for-leibowitz/she-watched-him.md)

> The last monk, upon entering, paused in the lock. He stood in the open hatchway and took off his sandals. "Sic transit mundus," he murmured, looking back at the glow. He slapped the soles of his sandals together, beating the dirt out of them.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr/a-canticle-for-leibowitz/the-last-monk.md)

> The abbot snapped off the set. "Where’s the truth”? he asked quietly. “What’s to be believed? Or does it matter at all? When mass murder’s been answered with mass murder, rape with rape, hate with hate, there’s no longer much meaning in asking whose ax is the bloodier. Evil, on evil, piled on evil. Was there any justification in our ‘police action’ in space? How can we know? Certainly there was no justification for what they did — or was there? We only know what that thing says, and that thing is a captive. The Asian radio has to say what will least displease its government; ours has to say what will least displease our fine patriotic opinionated rabble, which is what, coincidentally, the government wants it to say anyhow, so where’s the difference?"

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr/a-canticle-for-leibowitz/the-abbot-snapped.md)

> When Brother Francis had removed the last tray, he touched the papers reverently: only a handful of folded documents here, and yet a treasure; for they had escaped the angry flames of the Simplification, wherein even sacred writings had curled, blackened, and withered into smoke while ignorant mobs howled and hailed it a triumph. He handled the papers as one might handle holy things, shielding them from the wind with his habit, for all were brittle and cracked from age. There was a sheaf of rough sketches and diagrams. There were hand-scribbled notes, two large folded papers, and a small book entitled Memo.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr/a-canticle-for-leibowitz/when-brother-francis.md)

> How easy it would have been flatly to have told the boy that his pilgrim was only an old tramp of some kind, and then to have commanded him not to think otherwise. But by allowing the boy to see that a question was possible, he had rendered such a command ineffective before he uttered it. Insofar as thought could be governed at all, it could only be commanded to follow what reason affirmed anyhow; command it otherwise, and it would not obey.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr/a-canticle-for-leibowitz/how-easy-it-would.md)