Paul Hoffman Quotes

It is not against reason, said the Englishman, to prefer the destruction of the world to a scratch on your finger – how much easier to understand the same price for the gash in your soul.

How can I know for sure if it's my son speaking and not you?"
"You never can, my lord. Just as no man can ever be sure that he alone is a thinking and feeling creature and everyone else a machine that only pretends to feel and think.

You're the right colour for the Angel of Death, Mister Cale. But a little short.' 'I could cut your head off and stand on it. Then I'd be taller.

...the heart of a child can take forty-nine blows before it’s damaged for ever and what’s done can never be undone.

...the older I get, the more I believe that if love is to be judged by most of its visible effects, it looks more like hatred than friendship.

Get on your feet or die.

(Arbell)The ungrateful gorgeous bitch.

...his soul (was) ringing like a well-struck bell. But it was a bell that rang with more than joy and adoration - there was the sound there too of anger and resentment. She would not look at him because she did not want to be in his presence. She hated him and he (how could he not?) hated her in return.

Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it as it is to its victims - the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is that nobody really possesses a great kind of power for long. Those who have it on loan from Fate count on it too much and are themselves destroyed.

In such a beast as this..." (he means the army)"...it was the collective power that went, collapsing like a long-exhausted animal, at once falling under its own weight as much as that of its enemy. It was a collective death and not a matter of bravery or even strength, and once it was down it was finished as a battle.

Many are called, few are chosen.

Feeling sorry for yourself is a universal solvent of salvation.

Self-pity, while it should be accorded due respect, is the greatest of all acids to the human soul.

We are all cynics now, I suppose, and even a mewling infant knows that to save a life is to make an eternal enemy.

Hypocrites,’ replied Cale, ‘I’ve come across a lot of them recently. I mean by that I understand now how many of them there are.