Robin Hobb · 1861 pages
Rating: (2.3K votes)
“Long or short, if you worry about every step of a journey, you will divide it endlessly into pieces, any one of which may defeat you. Look only to the end.”
“Take all self-determination from a man’s life, and all that is left for him to do is complain.”
“A boy is a man when he proves himself to be one, but a girl is a woman when she desires to be one.”
“It’s all a trick,’ he observed. ‘All a rotten trick men play on themselves. They get together and they create this beautiful thing and then they stand back and say, “See, we have souls and insight and holiness and joy. We put it all in this building so we don’t have to bother with it in our everyday lives. We can live as stupidly and brutally as we wish, and stamp down any inclination to spirituality or mysticism that we see in our neighbours or ourselves. Having set it in stone, we don’t have to bother with it any more.” It’s a trick men play on themselves. Just one more way we cheat ourselves.”
“If she could make them both irritated with her, chances are they would commiserate with each other. So it had always worked when they were boys.”
“Half the evil in this world occurs while decent people stand by and do nothing wrong. It’s not enough to refrain from evil, Trell. People have to attempt to do right, even if they believe they cannot succeed.”
“Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else.”
“When you borrow trouble against what might be, you neglect the moment you have now to enjoy.”
“Sa help us all, but I plan to give her free rein and let her be as unpleasant and bitchy as only she knows how.”
“Tomorrow owes you the sum of your yesterdays. No more than that.”
“You didn’t shout at me. You were so quiet I thought you had left.’ ‘I almost did. I detest shouting. I hate being shouted at, and I never shout at anyone. That doesn’t mean I never get angry though.’ After a moment’s pause, she added, ‘Or that I never get hurt. “Only my pain is more silent than my anger.”
“But there was not a police car in sight. Sure, Tracy thought in disgust. They’re never around when you need them.”
“Reminds me of the red dress you wore the first time I had you. That was it for me, you know. You devastated me. There was no coming back from that.”
“...we were too young- and the ground too muddy- for our small part of the earth to move.”
“I was raised feral, and I mostly stayed that way.”
“Of all the men who were photographed that day, the chief’s life had come closest to the American ideal, closest in observing the principles on which this nation had been founded. He was immeasurably greater than Chester Arthur, the hack politician from New York, incomparably finer than Robert Lincoln, a niggardly man of no stature who inherited from his father only his name, and a better warrior, considering his troops and ordnance, than Phil Sheridan. His only close competitor was Senator Vest, who shared with him a love of land and a joy in seeing it used constructively.”
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