“Learn humility, while there's yet time--': those were the last of the abbot's words he had waited to hear. All very well, he thought, to be humble in accepting one's own pain and deprivation, perhaps, but what right have I, what right has he, to make a virtue of meekness when it will be Adam who suffers? I call that cheap humility.”
― Edith Pargeter, quote from The Heaven Tree Trilogy
“Should I come to you, Father, with anything that made me ashamed? What do I matter? What's honour to me? My honour is to keep her from harm and from grief. I have no other; I want none.”
― Edith Pargeter, quote from The Heaven Tree Trilogy
“Love with her would be a field of action, not a need. She was complete whether she won or lost the world. She was her own fortress and her own sanctuary.”
― Edith Pargeter, quote from The Heaven Tree Trilogy
“The dispensations of God are always just,' he said. 'We get the sons we deserve.”
― Edith Pargeter, quote from The Heaven Tree Trilogy
“Have you no errand I can do for you in hell?' he said. 'There's cleaner company there.”
― Edith Pargeter, quote from The Heaven Tree Trilogy
“He could not be a breaker, it was against his bent.”
― Edith Pargeter, quote from The Heaven Tree Trilogy
“I felt alone on the planet, drifting through the cosmos. With both hands I reached out to the night. There was no answer. Or maybe I just couldn't hear it.”
― Jerry Spinelli, quote from Love, Stargirl
“I have a little theory that I'd like to air here, if I may. What is it that you think makes you magicians?" More silence. Fogg was well into rhetorical-question territory now anyway. He spoke more softly. "Is it because you are intelligent? Is it because you are brave and good? Is is because you're special?
Maybe. Who knows. But I'll tell you something: I think you're magicians because you're unhappy. A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength.
Most people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them. But you, my friends, you found another way: a way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth. You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“[Research] suggests that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act – and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment – are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, quote from Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
“Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into the nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.”
― Thomas Wolfe, quote from Look Homeward, Angel
“My name—or the English version of my name—is Fighting Prawn.”
“Fighting Prawn?” said Alf.
“Does my name amuse you, Englishman?” said Fighting Prawn.
“No,” said Alf, his grin evaporating.
“If I may ask,” said Fighting Prawn, “what is your name?”
“Alf,” said Alf.
“Alf,” repeated Fighting Prawn. He said something to the other Mollusk’s, which included “Alf.” They roared with laughter. Fighting Prawn turned back to Alf.
“In our language,” he said, “Alf means squid poop.”
― Dave Barry, quote from Peter and the Starcatchers
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