The only product of the forces of evolution capable of understandingits own origins

He remembered a time at Bart's, holding a human brain in his hands for the first time, being amazed by the weight of it. This blown eggshell had contained the only product of the forces of evolution capable of understanding its own origins.

P. Barker, The ghost road (1995), 238

Cynical in the thorough-going way of those who have not so farencountered much to be cynical about

Potts  had been a science student at Manchester University, bright, articulate, cynical in the thorough-going way of those who have not so far encountered much to be cynical about. The war, he insisted loudly, flushed with wine, was feathering the nests of profiteers. It was being fought to safeguard access to the oil wells of Mesopotamia. It had nothing, absoluely nothing, to do with Belgian neutrality, the rights of small nations or anything like that. And if Hallet thought it had, then Hallet was a naive idiot. Hallet came from an old army family and had been well and expensively educated to think as little as possible; confronted by Potts, he floundered, but then quickly began to formulate beliefs he had hitherto believed everybody shared.

P. Barker, The ghost road (1995), 143