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.”
“When people say that the values of Islam are compassion, tolerance, and freedom, I look at reality, at real cultures and governments, and I see that it simply isn’t so. People in the West swallow this sort of thing because they have learned not to examine the religions or cultures of minorities too critically, for fear of being called racist. It fascinates them that I am not afraid to do so.”
“I always tend to assume there's an infinite amount of money out there."
There might as well be, "Arsibalt said, "but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water and bombs. There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle accelerators.”
“[Friendship] is a relationship that has no formal shape, there are no rules or obligations or bonds as in marriage or the family, it is held together by neither law nor property nor blood, there is no glue in it but mutual liking. It is therefore rare.”
“Oh well, could be worse, she could be hearing voices, oh wait she was, well crap.”
“Kiss my ass Rath Roiben Rye”
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