Isla

“Now you know what an absolute monarchy is" she explained to Bill. "You can see how power corrupts." "I was corrupt before I had power," Random said, "and rich is better.”
― Roger Zelazny, Trumps of Doom

“Beautiful people, though, I struggle with. Unless you keep your eyes shut or look the other way, you can’t help but have the awful fact ground into you, like the wheel of a heavy wagon running over your neck, that here is someone divided from you by a vast, unbridgeable gap, and they’ve done absolutely nothing to deserve it. Ogus’s wife – her name was Sichelgaita – was that level of beauty. I won’t even try to describe her, because they don’t make words that could take the strain. You felt ashamed to look at her.”
― K.J. Parker, Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City

“And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”
― Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

“YOU TRIED TO WARN HIM, he said, removing Binky’s nose-bag.

“Yes, sir. Sorry.”

YOU CANNOT INTERFERE WITH FATE. WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE WHO SHOULD LIVE AND WHO SHOULD DIE?

Death watched Mort’s expression carefully.

ONLY THE GODS ARE ALLOWED TO DO THAT, he added. TO TINKER WITH THE FATE OF EVEN ONE INDIVIDUAL COULD DESTROY THE WHOLE WORLD. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

Mort nodded miserably.

“Are you going to send me home?” he said.

Death reached down and swung him up behind the saddle.

BECAUSE YOU SHOWED COMPASSION? NO. I MIGHT HAVE DONE IF YOU HAD SHOWN PLEASURE. BUT YOU MUST LEARN THE COMPASSION PROPER TO YOUR TRADE.

“What’s that?”

A SHARP EDGE.”
― Terry Pratchett, Mort