The Urth of the New Sun

by Gene Wolfe

The most trivial skirmish is not trivial to those who die in it, and so should not be trivial in any ultimate sense to us.

with only trifling exceptions, battles are fought by cowards afraid to run.

Do you know what larvae are?” “Why, yes,” I answered. “Masked spirits.”

ok.

You are a woman, and so you say you produce your ovum so that there will someday be another woman. But your ovum would say it produces that woman so that someday there will be another ovum.

that pleasure in dealing justice and rewarding worth that is the final delight of power.

“Everyone who has lived is still alive, somewhen.

Men to whom wine had brought death long before lay by springs of wine and drank still, too stupefied to know their lives were past.’”

Now I knew that I had then begun the journey that was to make me Urth’s executioner; and although my task was done, I felt I could never be happy again —although after a watch or two I would have been happy enough, I suppose, if only my warm journeyman’s cloak had been returned to me.