The essence of wisdom is to know when to be doing, and when it's useless even to try

The gods do not visit you to remind you what you know already.

Wait for me." It was the same farewell as always. "Wait for me. I shall come back." And as ever, I made the same reply. "What else have I to do but wait for you? I shall be here, when you come again.

Arthur thought it better to make sure that the scattered Saxon forces could not re-form, at least while he came south for his father's burial.""He is young,"she said, "for such a charge."I smiled. "But ready for it, and more than able. Believe me, it was like seeing a young falcon take to the air, or a swan to the water.

Count Ambrosius was out of practice at chess. The usual game was dice, and he was not risking that against an infant soothsayer. Chess, being a matter of mathematics rather than magic, was less susceptible to the black arts.' --twelve-year-old Merlin, The Crystal Cave, p. 131 of 384

Thinking and planning is one side of life; doing is another. A man cannot be doing all the time.

Every man carries the seed of his own death, and you will not be more than a man. You will have everything; you cannot have more…

Only a child expects life to be just; it's a man's part to stand by the consequences of his deeds.

Merlin, do you mind?' It was the King who asked me, a man as old and wise as myself; a man who could see past his own crowding problems, and guess what it might men to me, to walk in dead air where once the world had been a god-filled garden.