“Tell people the hammered truth, and it will ring like steel against an anvil.”
― Elizabeth Haydon, quote from The Floating Island
“We each have our belssings and our curses. In the end it makes us equals.”
― Elizabeth Haydon, quote from The Floating Island
“So now you know that, as dark as the depths of the sea may be, as dark as the night gets without a moon, it is not really true darkness. It's just waiting for light to return. There are places that are truly dark in this world, Ven, but this place here, this open stretch of sea where you are floating, is not one of them. It's not really dark here - it's just night. If you hang on and stay awake, in a short while the edges of the sky will start to turn gray, then pink, and the sun will rise, and there will be blue above and all around you again.”
― Elizabeth Haydon, quote from The Floating Island
“...as dark as the night gets without a moon, it is really not true darkness. It's just waiting for light to return.”
― Elizabeth Haydon, quote from The Floating Island
“Ven' is the Nain word for 'and.' It was my first word, and so was added to my name at the age of three, when I first spoke it. That is the Nain tradition; each child's first word becomes an official part of his or her name. As a result, three of my brothers are Petar Da-da Polypheme, Osgod No! Polypheme, and Linus Poo-poo Polypheme.
Personally, I think the Nain should rethink this tradition.
As for my name, I think perhaps there should be a question mark after it - 'and?' - as if life is always posing the question of what I am to do next. I was born with more than my share of curiosity, and it gets me into a frightful amount of trouble. I want to know what comes next from the time I wake up in the morning, wondering what the day will hold, till the moment I fall asleep, imagining where my dreams will take me at night. It's like an itch; my skin or scalp hums with excitement whenever my curiosity starts to take over. And? And? And? Scratching it does nothing to help; the itch doesn't go away, and I just look like I have dandruff or fleas.”
― Elizabeth Haydon, quote from The Floating Island
“When you're of a different race people distrust you because they are afraid. If you don't give them reason to dislike you, it becomes their problem, not yours.”
― Elizabeth Haydon, quote from The Floating Island
“I had always thought of home not as a house, or even a place, but a feeling of safety and acceptance, a warm light when the rest of the world was a dark, forbidding place.
Whenever my family was around, wherever we were, I felt like I was home.”
― Elizabeth Haydon, quote from The Floating Island
Elizabeth Haydon
Born place: in The United States
Born date January 1, 1965
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“conclusions are a matter of extrapolated logic based on her best comprehension of the principles the universe has revealed to her.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time
“He wasn’t so frightening, for a Voidbringer. He must have been like … the Voidbringer all the other ones made fun of for wearing silly hats. The one that would correct all the others, and explain which fork they had to use when they sat down to consume human souls.”
― Brandon Sanderson, quote from Edgedancer
“Although I know full well and hear every day that many people think little of me and say that I only write little pamphlets and sermons in German for the uneducated laity, I do not let that stop me. Would to God that in my lifetime I had, to my fullest ability, helped one layman to be better!”
― Eric Metaxas, quote from Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World
“Don’t even try to stop me from seeing her, Krychek,” he said to the cardinal, who still hadn’t spilled Silver ’s location. “I’m bigger and meaner than you.”
Krychek raised an eyebrow. “Bigger, yes. Meaner? Let’s leave that an open question.”
― Nalini Singh, quote from Silver Silence
“At the end of that class Demian said to me thoughtfully: "There’s something I don’t like about this story, Sinclair. Why don’t you read it once more and give it the acid test? There’s something about it that doesn’t taste right. I mean the business with the two thieves. The three crosses standing next to each other on the hill are almost impressive, to be sure. But now comes this sentimental little treatise about the good thief. At first he was a thorough scoundrel, had committed all those awful things and God knows what else, and now he dissolves in tears and celebrates such a tearful feast of self-improvement and remorse! What’s the sense of repenting if you’re two steps from the grave? I ask you. Once again, it’s nothing but a priest’s fairy tale, saccharine and dishonest, touched up with sentimentality and given a high edifying background. If you had to pick a friend from between the two thieves or decide which one you’d rather trust, you most certainly wouldn’t choose the sniveling convert. No, the other fellow, he’s a man of character. He doesn’t give a hoot for ‘conversion’, which to a man in his position can’t be anything but a pretty speech. He follows his destiny to it’s appointed end and does not turn coward and forswear the devil, who has aided and abetted him until then. He has character, and people with character tend to receive the short end of the stick in biblical stories. Perhaps he’s even a descendant of Cain. Don’t you agree?"
I was dismayed. Until now I had felt completely at home in the story of the Crucifixion. Now I saw for the first time with how little individuality, with how little power of imagination I had listened to it and read it. Still, Demian’s new concept seemed vaguely sinister and threatened to topple beliefs on whose continued existence I felt I simply had to insist. No, one could not make light of everything, especially not of the most Sacred matters.
As usual he noticed my resistance even before I had said anything.
"I know," he said in a resigned tone of voice, "it’s the same old story: don’t take these stories seriously! But I have to tell you something: this is one of the very places that reveals the poverty of this religion most distinctly. The point is that this God of both Old and New Testaments is certainly an extraordinary figure but not what he purports to represent. He is all that is good, noble, fatherly, beautiful, elevated, sentimental—true! But the world consists of something else besides. And what is left over is ascribed to the devil, this entire slice of world, this entire half is hushed up. In exactly the same way they praise God as the father of all life but simply refuse to say a word about our sexual life on which it’s all based, describing it whenever possible as sinful, the work of the devil. I have no objection to worshiping this God Jehovah, far from it. But I mean we ought to consider everything sacred, the entire world, not merely this artificially separated half! Thus alongside the divine service we should also have a service for the devil. I feel that would be right. Otherwise you must create for yourself a God that contains the devil too and in front of which you needn’t close your eyes when the most natural things in the world take place.”
― Hermann Hesse, quote from Demian
The Book of Ruth
The Complete Poems
Once Was Lost
Graveminder
Warrior's Cross
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