“Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing.”
“To love the journey is to accept no such end. I have found, through painful experience, that the most important step a person can take is always the next one.”
“Accept the pain, but don't accept that you deserved it.”
“I will take responsibility for what I have done,” Dalinar whispered. “If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man.”
“The question,’ she replied, ‘is not whether you will love, hurt, dream, and die. It is what you will love, why you will hurt, when you will dream, and how you will die. This is your choice. You cannot pick the destination, only the path.”
“You tried to help the people of the market. You mostly failed. This is life. The longer you live, the more you fail. Failure is the mark of a life well lived. In turn, the only way to live without failure is to be of no use to anyone. Trust me, I've practiced”
“The trick to happiness wasn’t in freezing every momentary pleasure and clinging to each one, but in ensuring one’s life would produce many future moments to anticipate.”
“Inappropriate?” Pattern said. “Such as … dividing by zero?”
“Yes, I began my journey alone, and I ended it alone.
But that does not mean that I walked alone.”
“The most important step a man can take. It's not the first one, is it? It's the next one. Always the next step, Dalinar.”
“Ten spears go to battle," he whispered, "and nine shatter. Did the war forge the one that remained? No, Amaran. All the war did was identify the spear that would not break”
“One can believe in a story without believing it happened.”
“Life breaks us, Teft. Then we fill the cracks with something stronger.”
“Aim for the sun. That way if you miss, at least your arrow will fall far away, and the person it kills will likely be someone you don’t know.”
“Life was about momentum. Pick a direction and don't let anything—man or storm— turn you aside.”
“You are not a heretic, Dalinar Kholin. You are a king, a Radiant, and a father. You are a man with complicated beliefs, who does not accept everything you are told. You decide how you are defined. Don’t surrender that to them. They will gleefully take the chance to define you, if you allow it.”
“Power was an illusion of perception, as Jasnah had said. The first step to being in control was to see yourself as capable of being in control.”
“You want to change the world, Shallan. That’s well and good. But be careful. The world predates you. She has seniority.”
“In my painful experience, the truth may be simple, but it is rarely easy.”
“Drehy,” Kaladin said, “you are literally courting a man.”
“So?” Drehy said.
“Yeah, what are you saying, Kal?” Skar snapped.
“Nothing! I just thought Drehy might empathize….”
“That’s hardly fair,” Drehy said.
“Yeah,” Lopen added. “Drehy likes other guys. That’s like … he wants to be even less around women than the rest of us. It’s the opposite of feminine. He is you could say extra manly.”
“Plan every battle as if you will inevitably retreat, but fight every battle like there is no backing down.”
“As long as you keep trying, there's a chance. When you give up? That's when the dream dies.”
“Love wasn’t about being right or wrong, but about standing up and helping when your partner’s back was bowed.”
“Your name is Lift, right?"
"Right."
"And your order?"
"More food.”
“Pattern, you’re to be our chaperone tonight.” “What,” Pattern said with a hum, “is a chaperone?” “That is someone who watches two young people when they are together, to make certain they don’t do anything inappropriate.” “Inappropriate?” Pattern said. “Such as . . . dividing by zero?”
“Oh, but I’m a scholar. I enjoy things with curious properties, and stupidity is most interesting. The more you study it, the further it flees—and yet the more of it you obtain, the less you understand about it!”
“Life was so much harder, but potentially so much more fulfilling, when you found the courage to choose.”
“If you could explain something perfectly, then you’d never need art.”
“Most people do not have the same values when they get money. Money changes a person completely. Very few people can withstand the lure of money and they are difficult to find. I have learnt that wherever there is money, people like to take advantage of the situation and maximize their return.”
“I love you like my own sister. Which is why I won't hesitate to tell you that I don't believe it.”
“Hang there like a fruit, my soul, Till the tree die!
-Posthumus Leonatus
Act V, Scene V”
“I have often heard it said that cowardice is the mother of cruelty, and I have found by experience that malicious and inhuman animosity and fierceness are usually accompanied by weakness. Wolves and filthy bears, and all the baser beasts, fall upon the dying.”
“Whatever their conscious motives, these men cannot know why they are as they are. As sickening as I find their behavior, I have to admit that if I were to trade places with one of these men, atom for atom, I would be him: There is no extra part of me that could decide to see the world differently or to resist the impulse to victimize other people. Even if you believe that every human being harbors an immortal soul, the problem of responsibility remains: I cannot take credit for the fact that I do not have the soul of psychopath. If I had truly been in Komisarjevsky's shoes on July 23,2007 - that is, if I had his genes and life experience and identical brain (or soul) in an identical state - I would have acted exactly as he did. There is simply no intellectually respectable position from which to deny this.”
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