Time's Convert (All Souls, #4)

by Deborah Harkness

“No act of creation has ever been painless,” she continued. “Miracles should leave a mark, so that we can remember how precious they are.”

“Folks are always in favor of fairness, until they have to give up something they have to someone else.”

Thomas Paine had come to believe that religion was the worst form of tyranny because it pursued you through death and into eternity—something no king or despot had yet managed to do. At last, Marcus settled on repeating something Thomas himself had written. “‘My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.’”