# Quote — Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

> The image of those cool green eyes lingered with him as long as life. He did not ask why God would choose to raise up a creature of primal innocence from the shoulder of Mrs. Grales, or why God gave to it the preternatural gifts of Eden — these gifts which Man had been trying to seize by brute force again from Heaven since first he lost them. He had seen primal innocence in those eyes, and a promise of resurrection. One glimpse had been a bounty, and he wept in gratitude. Afterwards he lay with his face in the wet dirt and waited.
>
> Nothing else ever came — nothing that he saw, or felt, or heard.

- Author: [Walter M. Miller Jr.](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr.md)
- Book: [A Canticle for Leibowitz](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr/a-canticle-for-leibowitz.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Walter_M._Miller_Jr.#Fiat_Voluntas_Tua) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr/a-canticle-for-leibowitz/the-image-of-those

## More from this book

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