“We are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, and no amount of education gleaned from our propensity for self-destruction and misguided thinking ever teaches us anything. Not anything that we remember for more than a generation or two.
I think maybe we learn a few things each time that we don't forget. A few things that stick with us. It's just hard to pass those things on to those who come after us because if they didn't live through it, they don't view it the same way we do. If you don't experience something firsthand, it's a lot harder to accept. Terry Brooks, Bearers of the Black Staff, p 89”
― Terry Brooks, quote from Bearers of the Black Staff
“And yet it had come to this: a cult that followed a dogmatic hard line of exclusion and repression, believed its teachings alone were the way that others must follow, and claimed special knowledge of something that had happened more than five centuries ago. It did nothing to soften its rigid stance, nothing to heal wounds that it had helped to create by deliberately shunning people of other Races, and nothing to explore the possibility of other beliefs. It held its ground even in the face of hard evidence that perhaps it had misjudged and refused to consider that it was courting a danger that might destroy everyone. p96”
― Terry Brooks, quote from Bearers of the Black Staff
“She had grown to accept unpleasantness as a part of life rather than to struggle futilely against truths that could not be changed.”
― Terry Brooks, quote from Bearers of the Black Staff
“It is in the nature of things to want to believe that what's familiar and comfortable will last forever.”
― Terry Brooks, quote from Bearers of the Black Staff
“Centuries of enlightenment and progress vanished virtually overnight because Men couldn’t find a way to use it wisely and purposefully.”
― Terry Brooks, quote from Bearers of the Black Staff
“This isn’t something I had planned to talk about so soon,” her grandmother said as they entered the gardens. “I wanted to wait awhile longer to give you a chance to demonstrate that you were ready, that you had listened to what I told you about growing up and making mature decisions. I wanted you to season a little more. But we don’t always get what we want in this life. In fact, we don’t get what we want most of the time. We get compromises and settlements, half measures and tamped-down dreams. We get half a loaf baked, half a glass filled. That’s what we have here.”
Phryne nodded, having no idea what she was talking about. “That might be so, but we don’t have to like it.”
“We shouldn’t have to accept it, either. Mostly, we don’t. We understand the odds are against us, but we still strive for something more. We make our best effort each time out because now and then we get exactly what we want.”
― Terry Brooks, quote from Bearers of the Black Staff
Terry Brooks
Born place: in Sterling, Illinois, The United States
Born date January 8, 1944
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“What are you afraid of then?'
She pondered. He had already noticed that it was her hands which indicated what she was thinking of quite as much as her face and now he watched as she cupped them, making them ready to receive her thoughts.
'Not being able to see, I think,' she said.
'Being blind, you mean?'
'No, not that. That would be terrible hard but Homer managed it and our blind piano tuner is one of the serenest people I know. I mean ... not seeing because you're obsessed by something that blots out the world. Some sort of mania of belief. Or passion. That awful kind of love that makes leaves and birds and cherry blossom invisible because it's not the face on some man.”
― Eva Ibbotson, quote from A Song for Summer
“I even made poor Louis take me on Crusade. How's that for blasphemy? I dressed my maids as Amazons and rode bare-breasted halfway to Damascus. Louis had a seizure and I damn near died of windburn... but the troops were dazzled.”
― James Goldman, quote from The Lion in Winter
“none of my children—not one—ever took the easy road; that they strove to keep sanity, reason, and compassion alive and burning in these tragic times.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“I’d mistaken familiarity for insight and equated hours spent together as a measure of understanding.”
― Tom Rob Smith, quote from The Farm
“Ignorance of the actual dynamics of daily life can be bliss sometimes. Because we know chemistry and biology, we know that when we smelled something, the molecules from the source of the smell had actually entered our noses and taken up residence on our receptors. So when we smelled a dirty person, this meant that some of his filthy molecules had actually gotten into our nasal passages. This bothered us. We didn't want to know that person that well, and we certainly didn't want his disgusting molecules in our nasal receptors.”
― quote from Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl
Taint
MacRieve
Dear Killer
The Perfectionists
Kingdom of the Golde...
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