Tad Williams · 815 pages
Rating: (16.1K votes)
“Of all the songs we Zida'ya sing," she (Aditu) murmured, "the closest to our hearts are those which tell of things lost."
"Perhaps that is because none of us can show something's value until it is gone," said Josua.”
― Tad Williams, quote from To Green Angel Tower, Part 1
“But a mouse can be brave. Small as they are, though, they learn it is wiser not to challenge the cat.”
― Tad Williams, quote from To Green Angel Tower, Part 1
“And you, a king’s daughter, who willingly gave herself to me—who brought me to her bed? Are you so high and pure?” She”
― Tad Williams, quote from To Green Angel Tower, Part 1
“These were madmen, Simon realized, and that was the direst problem of the world: that madmen should be strong and unafraid, so that they, could force their will on the weak and peace-loving.”
― Tad Williams, quote from To Green Angel Tower, Part 1
“That is what I hate about ruling and royalty, Simon. It is living, breathing people with whom a prince plays the games of statecraft.”
― Tad Williams, quote from To Green Angel Tower, Part 1
“Why is it that men think they are brave and women are weak? Women see more blood and pain than men ever do, unless men are fighting - and that is foolish blood.”
― Tad Williams, quote from To Green Angel Tower, Part 1
“You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"—how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?... But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Beyond Good and Evil
“It is funny how you do not miss affection until it is given, but once it is, it can never be enough; you would drown in it if possible.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Sweet Far Thing
“The soul is "torn apart in a painful condition as long as it prefers the eternal because of its Truth but does not discard the temporal because of familiarity.”
― Augustine of Hippo, quote from Confessions
“There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about all; and although no airs blew from out the Heavens, yet everything had motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumberable butterflies, that might have been mistaken for tullips with wings.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales
“Galen tells us that the heart and all the arteries pulsate with the same rhythm, so that from one you can judge of all, and that a slow and regular pulse signifies good health. But since Achmed, I have found that the pulse also may be used to determine the state of a patient’s agitation or peace of mind. I have done so many times, and the pulse has proven to be The Messenger Who Never Lies.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician
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