Great catastrophes were often wrought by such small things.  The intolerance of a prince and the stupidity of an arrogant lord.

...when we're most certain, we're most certain to be deceived.

A cousellor, as you seem to have forgotten, provides his Prince with the facts necessary for sober judgements.  He does not make his own judgements, then upbraid his Prince for not sharing them.

War is dark.  Black as pitch.  It is not a God.  It does not laugh or weep.  It rewards neither skill nor daring.  It is not a trial of souls, not the measure of wills.  Even less is it a tool, a means to some womanish end.  It is merely the place where the iron bones of the earth meet the hollow bones of men and break them.

All men are frauds.  Some, the wise, fool only others.  Other, the foolish, fool only themselves.  And a rare few fool both others and themselves - they are the rules of Men...

When one believed, one's soul was moved.  When one didn't, everything else moved.

A book was never "read."  Here, as elsewhere, language betrayed the true nature of the activity.  To say that a book was read was to make the same mistake as the gambler who crowed about winning as though he'd taken it by force of hand or resolve.  To toss the number-sticks was to seize a moment of helplessness, nothing more.  But to open a book was by far the more profound gamble.  To open a book was not only to seize a moment of helplessness, not only to relinquish a jealous handful of heartbeats to the unpredictable mark of another man's quill, it was to allow oneself to be written.  For what was a book if not a long consecutive surrender to the movements of another's soul?

Beliefs were the foundation of actions.  Those who believed without doubting... acted without thinking.  And those who acted without thinking were enslaved.

All our acts upon what we assume to be true..., what we assume to know.  The connection is so strong, so thoughtless, that when those things we need to be true are threatened, we try to make them true with our acts.  We condemn the innocent to make the guilty.  We raise the wicked to make them holy.  Like the mother who continues nursing her dead babe, we act out our refusal.