Quotes from The Whale Rider

“He loved them deeply, but sometimes love becomes a power game between the ambitions that parents have for their children and the ambitions that children have for themselves.”
― Witi Ihimaera, quote from The Whale Rider

“Der Mensch mag sein moko (Tätowierung) in die Erde tätowieren, aber sobald seine Wachsamkeit nachlässt, nimmt die Natur sich zurück, was er sich angeeignet hatte, um seine Eitelkeit zu befriedigen.”
― Witi Ihimaera, quote from The Whale Rider

“Even the good guys,' she said, 'can't win all the time.”
― Witi Ihimaera, quote from The Whale Rider

“... the love which Kahu received from Koro Apirana was the sort that dropped off the edge of the table, like breadcrumbs after everybody else has had a big meal.”
― Witi Ihimaera, quote from The Whale Rider

“Sometimes life has a habit of flooding over you and rushing you along in its overwhelming tide.”
― Witi Ihimaera, quote from The Whale Rider

“... sometimes love becomes a power game between ambitions that parents have for their children and the ambitions that children have for themselves.”
― Witi Ihimaera, quote from The Whale Rider

“Man might carve his mark on the earth but unless he's vigilant, Nature will take it all back.”
― Witi Ihimaera, quote from The Whale Rider

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Popular quotes

“In a note to a West Point classmate, Eisenhower wrote, “There is no use denying that at times discouragement has piled on top of discouragement.”
― Rick Atkinson, quote from An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943

“Don’t stop,’ said Lymond pleasantly. ‘You’ve my father, my brother, my late sister and a whole clecking of aunts to get through. Auntie May is a good one to start with. Fifteen stone, and every spring she goes broody; and we find her out in the hen run on a clutch of burst yolks; except the year mother got there first and hard-boiled them.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from Queens' Play

“I’m not the only kid who lives here. There’s my sister, Natalie, except she doesn’t count.”
― Gennifer Choldenko, quote from Al Capone Does My Shirts

“In my travels on the surface, I once met a man who wore his religious beliefs like a badge of honor upon the sleeves of his tunic. "I am a Gondsman!" he proudly told me as we sat beside eachother at a tavern bar, I sipping my wind, and he, I fear, partaking a bit too much of his more potent drink. He went on to explain the premise of his religion, his very reason for being, that all things were based in science, in mechanics and in discovery. He even asked if he could take a piece of my flesh, that he might study it to determine why the skin of the drow elf is black. "What element is missing," he wondered, "that makes your race different from your surface kin?"

I think that the Gondsman honestly believed his claim that if he could merely find the various elements that comprised the drow skin, he might affect a change in that pigmentation to make the dark elves more akin to their surface relatives. And, given his devotion, almost fanaticism, it seemed to me as if he felt he could affect a change in more than physical appearance.

Because, in his view of the world, all things could be so explained and corrected. How could i even begin to enlighten him to the complexity? How could i show him the variations between drow and surface elf in the very view of the world resulting from eons of walking widely disparate roads?

To a Gondsman fanatic, everything can be broken down, taken apart and put back together. Even a wizard's magic might be no more than a way of conveying universal energies - and that, too, might one day be replicated. My Gondsman companion promised me that he and his fellow inventor priests would one day replicate every spell in any wizard's repertoire, using natural elements in the proper combinations.

But there was no mention of the discipline any wizard must attain as he perfects his craft. There was no mention of the fact that powerful wizardly magic is not given to anyone, but rather, is earned, day by day, year by year and decade by decade. It is a lifelong pursuit with gradual increase in power, as mystical as it is secular.

So it is with the warrior. The Gondsman spoke of some weapon called an arquebus, a tubular missile thrower with many times the power of the strongest crossbow.

Such a weapon strikes terror into the heart of the true warrior, and not because he fears that he will fall victim to it, or even that he fears it will one day replace him. Such weapons offend because the true warrior understands that while one is learning how to use a sword, one should also be learning why and when to use a sword. To grant the power of a weapon master to anyone at all, without effort, without training and proof that the lessons have taken hold, is to deny the responsibility that comes with such power.

Of course, there are wizards and warriors who perfect their craft without learning the level of emotional discipline to accompany it, and certainly there are those who attain great prowess in either profession to the detriment of all the world - Artemis Entreri seems a perfect example - but these individuals are, thankfully, rare, and mostly because their emotional lacking will be revealed early in their careers, and it often brings about a fairly abrupt downfall. But if the Gondsman has his way, if his errant view of paradise should come to fruition, then all the years of training will mean little. Any fool could pick up an arquebus or some other powerful weapon and summarily destroy a skilled warrior. Or any child could utilize a Gondsman's magic machine and replicate a firebal, perhaps, and burn down half a city.

When I pointed out some of my fears to the Gondsman, he seemed shocked - not at the devastating possibilities, but rather, at my, as he put it, arrogance. "The inventions of the priests of Gond will make all equal!" he declared. "We will lift up the lowly peasant”
― R.A. Salvatore, quote from Streams of Silver

“Damals war der Ruf des Detektivs William A. Pinkerton und seines Auskunftsbüros sehr bedeutend. Der Mann war durch eine Reihe von Wechselfällen aus Armut zu hohem Ansehen in seinem sonderbaren und für manche Leute widerwärtigen Beruf emporgestiegen, aber für alle, die solche an sich unglücklichen Dienste benötigen, war seine wohlbekannte und patriotische Rolle im Bürgerkrieg und um Abraham Lincolns Person eine Empfehlung. Er oder vielmehr seine Organisation hatte diesen während der ganzen Dauer seiner stürmischen Amtszeit im Regierungspalast geschützt. Seine Firma hatte Niederlassungen in Philadelphia, Washington und New York, um nur die bedeutendsten Orte zu nennen.”
― Theodore Dreiser, quote from The Financier

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BookQuoters 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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