Being brave meant that though you might be frightened, you would face the greatest danger if you knew it was the right thing to do.

And his eyes frighten me, too. They're the eyes of an old man, an old man who's seen so much in life that he no longer cares to go on living. They're not even desperate... just quiet and expectant, and very, very lonely, as if he were quite alone of his own free choice.

Johannes had once said that violence and cruelty were just a stupid person's way of making himself felt, because it was easer to use your hands to strike a blow than to use your brain to find a logical and just solution to the problem.

You could not bribe honest people, but bad people would accept bribery.

There's always something when you're at fault, too, and that fault you must discover and learn to recognize and take the consequences of it.

Joy passed, but happiness never completely disappeared a touch of it would always remain to remind one it had been there. It was happiness that made one smile, then.

Never let me hear you say it's someone else's fault. It often is, but you must never shirk your own responsibility ... You can't change others, but you can do something about a fault in yourself.

And it was most important to do what one knew was right, for otherwise the day might come when one could no longer tell the difference between right and wrong.

The angrier you were, the less likely you were to think clearly.

Sorrow has its life just like people. Sorrow is born and lives and dies. And when it's dead and gone, someone's left behind to remember it. Exactly like people.

The sun glistened on a drop of water as it fell from his hand to his knee. David wiped it off, but it left no tidemark: there was no more dirt to rub away. He took a deep breath and shivered. He was David. Everything else was washed away, the camp, its smell, its touch--and now he was David, his own master, free--free as long as he could remain so.