“You might want to think twice before you try to use a man's conscience against him. It may turn out he doesn't have one.”
“Moments of beauty sustain us through hours of ugliness.”
“It's better that the innocent should live than that the guilty die”
“Delusional people tend to believe in what they're doing.”
“If you looked busy, you could get away with almost anything.”
“And what fun is it being a genius if no one appreciates you?”
“You have to be a little bad to make history.”
“When you don't know what to do, do what's right and do what's in front of you. But not necessarily what's right in front of you.”
“Will covers a multitude of flaws, just as love covers a multitude of sins.”
“If embarrassment were a muscle, I'd be huge.”
“Maybe when you were born on the top of the mountain you could pretend the mountain didn't matter, but those who climbed it and those born at its base who could never climb at all knew differently.”
“one doesn't interrupt a beautiful girl unless one is going to be funny.”
“Do you know why you feel destined for something greater?”
“Why?” Kip asked, quiet, hopeful.
“Because you’re an arrogant little shit.”
“Delayed justice was as bad as injustice.”
“I am the stupidest person I have ever met.”
“At some point, you have to decide not merely what you're going to believe, but how you're going to believe. Are you going to believe in people, or in ideas or in Orcholam? With your heart, or with your head? Will you believe what's in front of you, or in what you think you know? There are some things you think you know that are lies. I can't tell you what those are, and I'm sorry for that.”
“I was a bad child. Fortunately, I’ve come a long way since then. Now I’m a bad man.”
“Charm is less effective on people who have good reason to kick your ass ”
“Because we know ourselves. Because others obey us as though we were gods, and we know we’re not. We see the fragility of our own power, and through it we see the fragility of every other link. What if the Spectrum suddenly refused my orders? Not hard to imagine, when you consider the scheming and lust for power it takes to become a Color. What if a general suddenly refuses his satrap’s orders? What if a son refuses his father’s orders? What if that first link in the Great Chain of being—Orholam Himself—is as empty as every other link before him? Seeing the weakness of each link, we think the Great Chain itself is fragile: surely at any moment it will burst if we don’t do everything in our power to hold it together.”
“He wasn’t afraid of death, but he was afraid of dying before he accomplished his purposes.”
“It was the kind of beauty that made you shit your pants.”
“Better oblivion chosen of his own will than torture forever according to his brother's.”
“Sometimes lies are most necessary with our friends.”
“Si tengo que dejar atrás todo lo que amo, me esforzaré para que valga la pena.”
“¿Cuántas veces podía hacerte tanto daño una persona? [...] ¿Cuántos hombres vuelven de la guerra convertidos en mejores personas?
Ninguno, por lo visto.
¿Y cuántas mujeres aprenden de sus errores?
Esta no.”
“¿Por qué arrasarían esos dos hombres el mundo entero, de lo contrario? ¿Por tus conocimientos de historia? ¿Por tu aguda conversación? No. Eras una chica bonita embellecida por los bardos en un intento por explicar lo que desencadenaste. No me malinterpretes -añadió-, estaba tan loco por ti que me pasaba las noches en vela. Fuiste mi primer gran amor no correspondido.”
“As they were walked closer, Kip saw that his inference was correct: every single person here was a drafter. There had to be eight hundred or a thousand drafters here! “Orholam,” Karris breathed. “There must be five hundred drafters here.” So I can’t count, so what?”
“No era justo. Después de tantos años, la belleza de una mujer no debería ser capaz de penetrar con tanta impunidad en el pecho de un hombre y de oprimirlo hasta arrebatarle el aliento. Sobre todo cuando jamás podría ser suya.”
“every time you find yourself making a judgment immediately upon observing—in fact, even if you don’t think you are, and even if everything seems to make perfect sense—train yourself to stop and repeat: It is impossible as I state it, and therefore I must in some respect have stated it wrong. Then go back and restate it from the beginning and in a different fashion than you did the first time around. Out loud instead of silently. In writing instead of in your head. It will save you from many errors in perception.”
“hatch. I wouldn’t risk another high-speed dock if we don’t have to.”
“I had a sense then of how if we truly understood how many of the unimportant things we do will end up outliving us, we'd never be able to go on.”
“I don't know if she has a boyfriend. You should ask her.'
'If I ask her, she'll say yes. It's better not to know. That way you're always in with a chance. Even if they're with their husbands, and you've just watched them take their vows, never ask them if they're married. Totally ruins your chances.”
“If you cut off my hands, I'll write with my feet, and if you cut off my feet, I'll write with my nose, and if you cut that off, you may as well cut my whole head off, because no matter how you slice and dice me, you can't control what I think, or what I feel. You can keep me locked up for the rest of my life, however brief that may be. But you will never, ever own me.”
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