His Dark Materials Omnibus (His Dark Materials, #1-3)

by Philip Pullman

“We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not,” said the witch, “or die of despair.

The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else.

Capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.’

Maybe sometimes we don’t do the right thing because the wrong thing looks more dangerous, and we don’t want to look scared, so we go and do the wrong thing just because it’s dangerous. We’re more concerned with not looking scared than with judging right.

“If it could tell us, we’d know. But since it can’t, I’m not going to kill it. That would be considering our feelings rather than the toad’s.”

I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that’s an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.”

all the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity.

wisdom has had to work in secret, whispering her words, moving like a spy through the humble places of the world while the courts and palaces are occupied by her enemies.”

My soul, do not seek eternal life, but exhaust the realm of the possible. • PINDAR •