The only trouble was that the scripture master, Mr. Ebenzar, was a fanatic.

A profound unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life. All else is false.

It was Monday morning. Swaminathan was reluctant to open his eyes. he considered Monday specially unpleasant in the calendar. After the delicious freedom of Saturday and Sunday, it was difficult to get into the Monday mood of work and discipline. He shuddered at the very thought of school: the dismal yellow building; the fire-eyed Vedanayagam, his class teacher, and headmaster with his thin long cane...

There are no more surprises and shocks in life, so that I watch the flame without agitation. For me the greatest reality is this and nothing else... Nothing else will worry or interest me in life hereafter.

No one ever accepts criticism so cheerfully. Neither the man who utters it nor the man who invites it really means it.

We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all.