“The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“Always leave a way out, unless you really want to find out how hard a man can fight when he’s nothing to lose.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“I'm a gambler, a farmboy, and I'm here to take command of your bloody army!
--Mat Cauthon”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“Waiting turns men into bears in a barn, and women into cats in a sack.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“Only a battle lost is sadder than a battle won.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“Storms rumble beyond the horizon, and the fires of heaven purge the earth. There is no salvation without destruction, no hope this side of death.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“At my age, if I make it up, it's still an old saying.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“Juilin," she asked hesitantly, "what were you going to do with the salt and cooking oil? Not exactly," she added more quickly. "Just a general idea."
He looked at her for a moment. "I do not know. But they did not, either. That is the trick of it; their minds made up worse then I ever could. I have seen a tough man break when I sent for a basket of figs and some mice.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“How long had he been doing what was necessary instead of what was right? In a fair world they would be one and the same.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“i can't understand her"
well son, you might as well try to understand the sun”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“Take what you can have. Rejoice in what you can save, and do not mourn your losses too long.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“When a woman says she will obey you, of her own will, it is time to sleep lightly and watch your back.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“Victory settles a lot of arguments in most men's heads.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“A spoonful of hope and a cup of despair”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“Good morrow, High Lord Weiramon, and all you other High Lords and Ladies. I'm a gambler, a farmboy, and I'm here to take command of your bloody army! The bloody lord Dragon Reborn will be with us as soon as he flaming takes care of one bloody little matter!”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“We are alike in many ways, you and I. There is darkness in us. Darkness, pain, death. They radiate from us. If ever you love a woman, Rand, leave her and let her find another. It will be the best gift you can give her.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“A man can get killed in there.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“She was a soldier, a warrior in her way as much as I. This could have happened two hundred times these past twenty years. She knew it, and so did I. It was a good day to die.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“There's an old saying in the Two Rivers" Rand said dryly. "'The louder a man tells you he's honest, the harder you must hold on to your purse.'" Another said, "The fox often offers to give the duck its pond.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“Past is past, and the future is ahead.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“In Shinear, a woman [is] safe anywhere, any time-except from Trollocs and Myrddraal, of course-and any man [will] die to see it so.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“We have made the world dance as we sang for three thousand years. That is difficult habit to break, as I have learned while dancing to your song. You must dance free, and even the best intentioned of my sisters may well try to guide your steps as I once did.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“Keep your mind out of the pigsty, man!”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“Elayne could not help herself. Nynaeve wielding her tongue like a needle, Cerandin stubborn as two mules, and now this. She threw back her head and screamed with frustration.
When the sound died, it seemed as if the animals had quieted. Horse handlers stood about, staring at her. Coolly, she ignored them. Nothing could worm its way under her skin now. She was as calm as ice, perfectly in control of herself.
“Was that a cry for help,” Birgitte said, tilting her head, “or are you hungry? I suppose I could find a wet nurse in—”
Elayne strode away with a snarl that would have done any of the leopards proud.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“Women were glad when he came into their lives. It was not boasting. Women smiled for him; even when he left them, they smiled as if they would welcome him back. That was all he ever really wanted from women; a smile, a dance, a kiss, and to be remembered foundly.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“Hero! He was no hero! What did a hero get? An Aes Sedai patting you on the head before she sent you out like a hound to do it again. A noblewoman condescending to favor you with a kiss, or laying a flower on your grave.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
“Till Shade is gone, till water is gone, into the Shadow with teeth bared, screaming defiance with the last breath, to spit in Sightblinder's eye on the Last Day. By my honor and the Light, my life will be a dagger for Sightblinder's heart.
Until the Last Day, To Shayol Ghul itself.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Fires of Heaven
Robert Jordan
Born place: in Charleston, South Carolina, The United States
Born date October 17, 1948
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“Why couldn’t morality have evolved to promote cooperation in a more general way? Because universal cooperation is inconsistent with the principles governing evolution by natural selection. I”
― Joshua D. Greene, quote from Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them
“When you try to push a thought away, and it keeps coming back to your mind, you are more likely to assume that it must be true.”
― Kelly McGonigal, quote from The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It
“PART 2
I felt doomed to death,
But in a flash,
Before I could reduce my thoughts
To an emotion,
I felt a mass leave my body:
Departing.
Then my mind becomes anonymous
As is each night.
Just unfinished thoughts,
and a deep sickness inside,
As I was forced to swallow it,
Something I've tried to bury deep inside my
psyche to this day.
(poem written by alter personality)”
― quote from Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
“What is the use of beauty in woman? Provided a woman is physically well made and capable of bearing children, she will always be good enough in the opinion of economists.
What is the use of music? -- of painting? Who would be fool enough nowadays to prefer Mozart to Carrel, Michael Angelo to the inventor of white mustard?
There is nothing really beautiful save what is of no possible use. Everything useful is ugly, for it expresses a need, and man's needs are low and disgusting, like his own poor, wretched nature. The most useful place in a house is the water-closet.
For my part, saving these gentry's presence, I am of those to whom superfluities are necessaries, and I am fond of things and people in inverse ratio to the service they render me. I prefer a Chinese vase with its mandarins and dragons, which is perfectly useless to me, to a utensil which I do use, and the particular talent of mine which I set most store by is that which enables me not to guess logogriphs and charades. I would very willingly renounce my rights as a Frenchman and a citizen for the sight of an undoubted painting by Raphael, or of a beautiful nude woman, -- Princess Borghese, for instance, when she posed for Canova, or Julia Grisi when she is entering her bath. I would most willingly consent to the return of that cannibal, Charles X., if he brought me, from his residence in Bohemia, a case of Tokai or Johannisberg; and the electoral laws would be quite liberal enough, to my mind, were some of our streets broader and some other things less broad. Though I am not a dilettante, I prefer the sound of a poor fiddle and tambourines to that of the Speaker's bell. I would sell my breeches for a ring, and my bread for jam. The occupation which best befits civilized man seems to me to be idleness or analytically smoking a pipe or cigar. I think highly of those who play skittles, and also of those who write verse. You may perceive that my principles are not utilitarian, and that I shall never be the editor of a virtuous paper, unless I am converted, which would be very comical.
Instead of founding a Monthyon prize for the reward of virtue, I would rather bestow -- like Sardanapalus, that great, misunderstood philosopher -- a large reward to him who should invent a new pleasure; for to me enjoyment seems to be the end of life and the only useful thing on this earth. God willed it to be so, for he created women, perfumes, light, lovely flowers, good wine, spirited horses, lapdogs, and Angora cats; for He did not say to his angels, 'Be virtuous,' but, 'Love,' and gave us lips more sensitive than the rest of the skin that we might kiss women, eyes looking upward that we might behold the light, a subtile sense of smell that we might breathe in the soul of the flowers, muscular limbs that we might press the flanks of stallions and fly swift as thought without railway or steam-kettle, delicate hands that we might stroke the long heads of greyhounds, the velvety fur of cats, and the polished shoulder of not very virtuous creatures, and, finally, granted to us alone the triple and glorious privilege of drinking without being thirsty, striking fire, and making love in all seasons, whereby we are very much more distinguished from brutes than by the custom of reading newspapers and framing constitutions.”
― Théophile Gautier, quote from Mademoiselle de Maupin
“All men have stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems... But all these stars are silent. You-You alone will have stars as no one else has them... In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night..You, only you, will have stars that can laugh! And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me... You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure... It will be as if, in place of the stars, I had given you a great number of little bells that knew how to laugh”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, quote from Der kleine Prinz
The Enchanted April
The Man Who Laughs
This is Where I Leav...
The Feynman Lectures...
Warrior of the Light
The WillBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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