p.5-6 One thing I had been able to tell them was that a great ship was on its way, across space, from the home world of the Masters, carrying machines that would turn our earth's atmosphere into air which they could breathe naturally, so that they would not have to stay inside the protective domes of the Cities. Men, and all other creatures native to the planet, would perish as the choking green fog thickened. In four years, my own Master had said, it would arrive, and the machines would be set up. There was so little time. "...There can be no excuse for action unnecessarily delayed, time wasted. Every day, hour, minute counts.
 "But something else counts as much or more; and that is forethought. It is because events press so hard on us that we must think and think again before we act. We cannot afford many false moves - perhaps we cannot afford any. Therefore your Council has deliberated long and anxiously before coming to you with its plans..."

p.12 "...every tiny item counts in the struggle."

p.13 we had to be prepared for countermeasures.

p.57 "If we could lure it back on to the old route..."

"Of course. The problem is: how? What would lure a tripod? Do you know? Does anyone?"

p.58 "...If somehow we could attract this one's attention, and perhaps lead it into the trap... I think it might work."

p.59 During the previous nine days I had many times rehearsed my part in this morning's events.

p.87 "What has been needed was a way of striking at the Masters themselves, all of them and at the same time..."

p.98 Surely the first Master who saw one of us would realize the truth and raise the alarm?

p.98 "It is time," Fritz said. "In we go."

p.120 I do not know what they thought was happening to them, but they plainly failed to work it out... the notion... was something they were incapable of grasping. They had... an apparently infallible means of sensing anything... which could be injurious. Apparently infallible, but not quite. It is hard to be defensive toward a danger which you have never imagined existed.

p.163-164 We learned to know the sky, to read signs and portents in small things, to anticipate how a current of air would ride up the side of a rock face.

p.172 It was not the best quarter from the point of view of making progress, and a good deal of tacking had to be done to get what advantage we could.

p.196 the glorious future which man could and should enjoy depended also on the way in which he governed himself, for man was the measure of all things.