Dragon Seed

Hope must come out of what we have, or it is not hope, but a dream.

It is better to live than to die, and peace is better than war, and though there are some who deny this as robbers do, the truth remains what it is.

Ling Tan knew that women are more able to kill and do hard deeds than men are. They shed their blood each month, and they pour it out when they give birth, and so they are not afraid of blood. But when a man’s blood flows, he knows his life goes out with it, and so he is more squeamish than a woman is and to learn to shed blood easily moves him and stirs his being and changes him.

learning makes a man weak and a learned man can never be so brave as one unlettered.

be ready to die and yet sure I will not die.

she had tied over her cloth shoes a pair of straw sandals such as he wore in the field, and she had put on her strongest plainest blue garments, such as country women wear, coat and trousers

We men of peace and sense, whether here on top of the earth or hanging downward from it on the other side, we ought to band together and forbid life to all who would make war. Yes, when we see a child like that we ought to keep him locked, if he will not be taught.

Orchid was one of those women who live long when they are loved and cared for, but in trouble they die soon.

Together their minds followed the slender figure of the boy, limping lonely through the night and toward the hills.

Ling Sao, for she had a kind round face and bright eyes, and her black hair was mixed with gray, and she was the sort to whom all spoke easily and whom easily they called “good mother.

Sirs,” he said, “we are only farmers and a small merchant or two in a village and my cousin the scholar, and we are men of peace and reason, and we welcome law and order. Sirs, we have no weapons, but we have prepared a few cakes and some tea—

why should our grandchild be born somewhere out in a field like a wild hare?

The gods made us human beings of soft and easily wounded flesh, for they dreamed us good and not evil.

But a book you put into your mind and there it lies and you can read it over when you forget it and think of it longer and out of it who knows what you will think?

If he is tied to his house and cannot travel and he longs to travel, there are books for that.

her own kind of flesh that lived in the fields and ate its meats and vegetables fresh and not decayed from long lying in markets.

Do not be full of hate for if you are your blood will turn to poison and you will fall ill, and then what have I left?

many a woman would have let her mind lie idle while she worked in the fields, but I have ever seen this difference between you and other women, that your mind cannot be idle, and I say I never know what is coming out of you. And so I never tire of you, old woman.

rulers anywhere are always the first to fly, and the people must stay behind to be steadfast. And the noise of the battle grew more strong, hour by hour.

Yes, their ancients had taught them that no good man would be a soldier and that the warlike man was the least of men and not to be respected, and so they had all believed.

All was well with the land and when all was well with the land then everything was well.

This country of his was not like some others he had heard of, where only in war was there work enough to be done. He had often sat listening in the tea shop to those who talked of things they had seen in foreign countries, and this he held was a main difference, that in foreign countries war was a business, but here it had never been.

This seems right to them today and that tomorrow and they do not know that one man’s mind cannot say what is the true right for another. No, in their pride of a little learning they rush out to do evil