These are a Part of Me

Taylor Caldwell was a prolific author who wrote historical fiction.  This week's quotes come from:

The Arm and the Darkness (1943)

He said somewhat childishly, "I am your sworn enemy."

The old man regarded him with genuine surprise. Then he began to smile as at a child with true mirth.  "No man is my enemy," he said, "unless I admit him to be so."

"That is mystical sophistry." remarked Arsine with disdain.

"No," said the priest, "it is a living truth. No man can hurt another, unless that other admits his enemy's capacity to hurt him.  There is no evil if we deny its existence, there is no menace to the soul unless that soul has conceded the reality of evil."

"And if you refuse to believe there is evil?" asked Arsine with the pitying scorn and amusement.

He was again ashamed at the old man's  sudden sadness.  The abbe' glanced away and mixed his mournful eyes on space. "I am an frail, old, and sinful." he whispered. "Had I true faith I would know that evil lives only in the imagination of man, in the corrupt hearts of the enemies of  God, God has created no wicked thing. Therefore good is the only reality,  How can one believe in the existence of evil?"

The Glory and The Lightning (1974)

A jeweled lizard ran along the alcove of the portico and a slave would have struck the small creature with a stone, but Zeno said in a voice unusually sharp, "Let the little beautiful thing live, for there is very little living beauty in the world. Besides has he offended you? Has he bitten you or poisoned you? Has he not as godly a reason to live as you and who are you to terminate his life?"

The Romance of Atlantis (Written when she was 12 published in 1975)

"Better appreciate a sunset than to be lord of a thousand conquered cities.  The man that can be moved by music is happier than he whose acclaim is shouted from the hilltops. The soul grows not by material things, but only by thought. If a man thinketh not, even though he sits upon a throne his soul is still in embryo."