How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"I have heard things, I admit it. And sometimes people talk over your head, not noticing you're there, or not thinking you understand. But at other times"—I paused—"it's as if something spoke to me, as if I saw things […] And sometimes the stars tell me […] and there is music, and voices in the dark. Like dreams." (I.3.28)
Young Merlin gives Ambrosius some juicy info about the workings of the southern Welsh court. Like a good military leader, Ambrosius wants to know Merlin's sources. Merlin's caught in a tight place. He doesn't know Ambrosius that well, but he does know that his life hangs in the balance. Can he tell him that he just "knows" things? Or would Ambrosius frown on things like second sight? Turns out all sources of knowledge are good to Ambrosius—so Merlin's safe.
Quote #2
It is common knowledge that, with children, those things which are most important often go unmentioned. It is as if the child recognizes, by instinct, things which are too big for him, and keeps them in his mind, feeding them with his imagination till they assume proportions distended or grotesque which can become equally the stuff of magic or of nightmare. (I.7.1)
Merlin recalls his first experience with the crystal cave and thinks about the role of imagination in the process of memory. This gets at a major concern in this work: knowledge and how we know things. For Merlin, knowledge is often about old-school studying. But sometimes, it's about divine inspiration and imagination. And because his memory is on the decline, he wonders if his "factual" memory of the crystal cave is really very accurate.
Quote #3
Belasius was pleased with me; we were doing mathematics, and it had been one of the days when I could forget nothing, but walked through the problems he set me as if the field of knowledge were an open meadow with a pathway leading plain across it for all to see. (II.6.34)
Stewart socks us with a lovely simile-and-metaphor combo here: Merlin is waltzing across the field of knowledge that day because his brain is so awesome that he comprehends EVERYTHING Belasius wants to teach him. There's a special kind of freedom that Merlin feels when it comes to the life of the mind. It was his earliest way of breaking free from the situation at home, and now, his intellect buys him free time to explore the power that's in the land around him.
Quote #4
"It's like waiting below a cover of cloud, then suddenly a wind shifts it and it breaks, and the light stabs down and catches me, sometimes full, sometimes only the flying edge of the pillars of sunlight. One day I shall be free of the whole temple." (II.12.106)
Merlin tries to prophesy for Ambrosius, but he Just. Can't. Do. It. He understands that he's limited by his experience and ability to handle his powers. Ambrosius is pretty chill about it, but Merlin's frustrated. What does he mean by when he says, "One day I shall be free of the whole temple"? Hard to say, but it's clear that Merlin looks forward to a day when he can leap over the mental boundaries that limit his supernatural abilities.
Quote #5
Perhaps after all the god had brought me here for this, perhaps was still driving me. Put yourself in his path.[…] Well, one could only use what was to hand. If I had no power to use, I had knowledge. (III.8.19)
Merlin finds himself in a sticky situation. Vortigern wants to sacrifice him and use his blood to mix into the cement that holds his tower together. Merlin can't believe that the god has led him to this place simply to be sacrificed for a crummy tower. He has to believe that he can do some good for Ambrosius even while captured by the enemy. As in so many other situations, Merlin's going to put that "degree" in engineering to good use. He knows that his scientific knowledge, not supernatural power, will be the key to saving his skin here.
Quote #6
"What do you see?"
Ambrosius' voice made me start. I looked at him, surprised. "See?"
"In the fire, Merlin the prophet."
"Nothing but dead men roasting." (IV.5.53-56)
Merlin isn't really on his best behavior here. Ambrosius has ordered Hengist's body to be burnt on a traditional Saxon funeral pyre out of respect. And since Merlin needs fire to see the future, Ambrosius thinks, "Hey, why not kill two birds with one stone?" But Merlin's having none of it. Perhaps it's the stench of the dead bodies cooking on an open fire. Or perhaps it's because Merlin can't prophesy on demand. Either way, no new knowledge is coming out of this experience.
Quote #7
The king-star rose again that night, looking, men said, like a fiery dragon, and trailing a cloud of lesser stars like smoke. But it did not need an omen to tell me what I had known since that night on the crest of Killare, when I had vowed to carry the stone from Ireland, and lay it upon his grave. (IV.10.45)
It's hard to say how Merlin knows what he knows here. Stewart makes it sound like, "Duh, anyone looking at that dying star would know that the Ambrosius had died." But that's just not true. Merlin has a special way of seeing that helps him read signs in the natural world. He does it again when the mighty King Arthur is conceived—and it saves him from despair. It's good to have special knowledge. Sometimes.
Quote #8
It took two hundred men to each stone as it was moved, drilled teams who worked by numbers and who kept up their rhythms, as rowers do, by music. The rhythms of the movement were of course laid down by the work, and the tunes were old tunes that I remembered from my childhood… (V.1.5)
If Merlin were one of your crew, he'd be the know-it-all who annoyed everyone. He knows everything. Everything. And not just obscure engineering formulae and bits of herbal folklore—nope, he knows all the pop songs of the day. Stack that up with his formal education, and Merlin's an unstoppable figure. In this case, he does the "impossible" by applying his knowledge and using old poetry to synchronize his massive work crew. Massive creepy stones, look out: you've met your match.
Quote #9
In the east night slackened, drew back like a veil, and the sun came up. Straight as a thrown torch, or an arrow of fire, light pierced through the grey air and laid a line clear from the horizon to the king-stone at our feet. For perhaps twenty heart-beats the huge sentinel trilithon before us stood black and stark, framing the winter blaze. (V.2 49)
Merlin has used his serious engineering cred to realign the stones at Stonehenge so that the rising sun on the winter solstice shoots a beam of light across his dad's grave. Even Uther is impressed at Merlin's mad skills—but he's also kind of turned off by them. He basically fires Merlin from any official position with his court, precisely because his knowledge comes from a place that Uther doesn't understand.
Quote #10
"[…] I shall take him out of the King's reach, and keep him and teach him all that Galapas taught me, and Ambrosius, and you, even Belasius. He will be the sum of all our lives, and when he is grown he will come back and be crowned King at Winchester." (V.10.69)
Merlin makes this promise to a dying Cadal. His old servant and friend just needs to know that his life (and death) weren't just for some prank, or so that the woman-crazy Uther could hook up with another beauty. By promising to pass on Cadal's wisdom to the king to come, Merlin ensures that Cadal's legacy will also live on.