"Corlath’s father had been a notorious lover of women; unsuspected half-brothers and half-sisters of the present king still turned up occasionally, which kept the subject in everyone’s mind. Corlath sometimes thought that his own policy of discretion in such matters only made his people nervous because they didn’t know what was going on—or if anything was."

Athos didn’t resent that his father expected him to play chess. He didn’t even resent that the late Count gloried in winning games over his small son. What he resented—the memory that still made the bile rise at the back of his throat—was that the rules of the game had never been explained to him. Night after night, he’d sat there, and learned all the moves by trying them the wrong way first. Night after night, day after day, he’d brooded on the losses. And every night his father smiled at him, with the exact same smile that the Cardinal was now giving him. Something to the movement of the Cardinal’s eyes made Athos realize he’d been inching his hand towards his sword, and he pulled it back by an effort of will.

But he pushed a smile onto his lips, and what he hoped was a pleasant expression into his eyes, and looked up at the Cardinal. “Do you truly mean, your eminence,” he said, filling his voice with wonder, “that I know more than you do?” There was a dark shadow beneath the Cardinal’s gaze, just like the first time that Athos had managed to take Father’s queen.

Life is the future, not the past. The past can teach us, through experience, how to accomplish things in the future, comfort us with cherished memories, and provide the foundation of what has already been accomplished. But only the future holds life. To live in the past is to embrace what is dead. To live life to its fullest, each day must be created anew.

The most important rule there is, the Wizard's Sixth Rule: the only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason. [...] Reason is the very substance of truth itself. The glory that is life is wholly embraced through reason, through this rule. In rejecting it, in rejecting reason, one embraces death.