Felix had gone to live in a lotus land of his imagination. Where what is desired is dreamed of as already happened, where obstacles dissolve under the weight of desire, and where reality has vanished entirely.

— Iain Pears

For, in his opinion, to study nature was a form of worship.

— Iain Pears

For the first time, she did want more. She did not know what she wanted, knew that it was dangerous and that she should rest content with what she had, but she knew an emptiness deep inside her, which began to ache.

— Iain Pears

He had volunteered early, rather than waiting to be conscripted, for he felt a duty and an obligation to serve, and believed that ... being willing to fight for his country and the liberty it represented, would make some small difference. ... His idealism was one of the casualties of the carnage [of Verdun].

— Iain Pears

[H]e initially conceived of Olivier as a man of the greatest promise destroyed by a fatal flaw, the unreasoning passion for a woman dissolving into violence, desperately weakening everything he tried to do. For how could learning and poetry be defended when it produced such dreadful results and was advanced by such imperfect creatures? At least Julien did not see the desperate fate of the ruined lover as a nineteenth-century novelist or a poet might have done, recasting the tale to create some appealing romantic hero, dashed to pieces against the unyielding society that produced him. Rather, his initial opinion -- held almost to the last -- was of Olivier as a failure, ruined by a terrible weakness.

— Iain Pears

He who profits by villainy, has perpetrated it.

— Iain Pears

He (William Cost) had some desire to be successful, but it did not burn so strongly in him that he was prepared to overcome his character to achieve it.

— Iain Pears

His idleness was his refuge, and in this he was like many others in [occupied] France in that period; laziness became political.

— Iain Pears

I have brought peace to this land, and security," he began." And what of your soul, when you use the cleverness of argument to cloak such acts? Do you think that the peace of a thousand cancels out the unjust death of one single person? It may be desirable, it may win you praise from those who have happily survived you and prospered from your deeds, but you have committed ignoble acts, and have been too proud to own them. I have waited patiently here, hoping that you would come to me, for if you understood, then some of your acts would be mitigated. But instead you send me this manuscript, proud, magisterial, and demonstrating only that you have understood nothing at all."" I returned to public life on your advice, madam," he said stiffly." Yes; I advised it. I said if learning must die it should do so with a friend by its bedside. Not an assassin.

— Iain Pears

I learned that I' have to be detached if I was ever to achieve anything at all.

— Iain Pears