Mars > Mars's Quotes

“Human thoughts are the most changeable thing in the world. The minute you're happy to have one, it's gone. The second you're pleased to be free of one, it's back. Maybe a thought is there, maybe it isn't: you can't put your finger on it for sure.”
― Natsume Sōseki, The Miner

“The darkness of the mine, the darkness of my mind: the two became one and indivisible. I did not sleep, however. Of that I'm sure. In the stillness, my consciousness became highly attenuated, that's all. But even this attenuated consciousness was one part real world in ten parts water. As diluted as I became, it never quite disappeared.”
― Natsume Sōseki, The Miner

“Everything about my experience was new and intense, but the new, intense things were somewhere far away. Or, rather, I felt as though a thick partition had formed between last night and today, marking a sharp distinction between the two. If the mere appearance and disappearance of the sun is going to disrupt the continuity of my heart this way, then I become strangely unsure of who I am myself. Life is like a dream.”
― Natsume Sōseki, The Miner

“Need brooks no delay, yet late is better than never.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“Then as he had kept watch Sam had noticed that at times a light seemed to be shining faintly within; but now the light was even clearer and stronger. Frodo's face was peaceful, the marks of fear and care had left it; but it looked old, old and beautiful, as if the chiseling of the shaping years was now revealed in many fine lines that had before been hidden, though the identity of the face was not changed. Not that Sam Gamgee put it that way to himself. He shook his head, as if finding words useless, and murmured: "I love him. He's like that, and sometimes it shines through, somehow. But I love him, whether or no.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

“Is everything sad going to come untrue?”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“The hobbit is hallowed for his terrible and grace-filled journey and hollowed out by it. His body seems too small for all that he endures but not so his heart. Fear, fatigue, cold, hunger, and thirst torment him, but he continues out of love. Frodo’s struggle shows that there are, in fact, two quests going on: his to destroy the Ring and the Ring’s to dominate and destroy him. Despite the despair that it causes, which both fills and empties him, the Ring-bearer remains as intent upon saving everyone as Denethor is not. Frodo’s torn heart still beats, and it pushes past terror and hopelessness because of Sam’s blessed aid and his own battered and bleeding will to do so. Both hobbits teach us the great value of redemptive suffering.”
― Anne Marie Gazzolo, Moments of Grace and Spiritual Warfare in The Lord of the Rings

“No more debates disturbed his mind. He knew all the arguments of despair and would not listen to them. His will was set, and only death would break it.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“Where are you going, Master?' cried Sam, though at last he understood what was happening.

'To the Havens, Sam,' said Frodo.

'And I can't come.'

'No, Sam. Not yet, anyway, not further than the Havens. Though you too were a Ring-bearer, if only for a little while. Your time may come. Do not be too sad, Sam. You cannot always be torn in two. You will have to be one and whole, for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be, and to do.'

'But,' said Sam, and tears started in his eyes, 'I thought you were going to enjoy the Shire, too, for years and years, after all you have done.'

'So I thought too, once. But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them. But you are my heir: all that I had and might have had I leave to you. And also you have Rose, and Elanor; and Frodo-lad will come, and Rosie-lass, and Merry, and Goldilocks, and Pippin; and perhaps more that I cannot see. Your hands and your wits will be needed everywhere. You will be the Mayor, of course, as long as you want to be, and the most famous gardener in history; and you will read things out of the Red Book, and keep alive the memory of the age that is gone, so that people will remember the Great Danger, and so love their beloved land all the more. And that will keep you as busy and as happy as anyone can be, as long as your part in the Story goes on.

'Come now, ride with me!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“As long as a person remains conscious and retains any awareness at all, he can never lose just the awareness that he is happy.”
― Sōseki Natsume, The Miner

“Even the holiest of lights must lose some of its glory when it is reduced to a function of the real world.”
― Sōseki Natsume, The Miner

“However bad you may feel, however great your anguish, however convinced you may be that your soul is trying to escape, your stomach empties itself out just fine.”
― Sōseki Natsume, The Miner

“When I call him a fool, I mean it only in the sense that he was just as pitiful a creature as I was, and implying the sympathy of one fool for another.”
― Sōseki Natsume, The Miner

“The human heart, it seems to me after careful consideration, is like water. Push it and it gives way; pull back, and it comes flowing in.”
― Sōseki Natsume, The Miner

“They don’t realize that water never comes back once it’s flowed away; while you’re dillydallying, it evaporates.”
― Sōseki Natsume, The Miner

“Don’t be scared,” Hatsu said, coughing a few times. “It’s just dynamite.”
― Sōseki Natsume, The Miner

“Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it's important to know what's right and what's wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“You are a major dimwit. Is your brain made out of jello, you spineless twit? A leaf? What do you think I am, one of those magical raccoons? I'm a concept, get it? Con-cept! Concepts and raccoons aren't exactly the same, now are they? What a dumb thing to say...”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“You fooled us. Render your work, not your lives.
This seems like the newest answer to an old question.
Cheap muscle and blood to build you an Empire-
that we can't stay in. Gran's gone missing from
Saturday morning. Brixton Market? No one is frowning at
the quality of the yams, or asking how the snapper's
eye so cloudy. There'll be no Saturday soup tonight.”
― Roger Robinson, A Portable Paradise

“How is it I'm begging you for housing,
when you burnt my building down?
You all ain't even playing fake-nice, like those
other murderers. You are all cut-eye and snarls,
all straight jargon, and nothing but the jargon.”
― Roger Robinson, A Portable Paradise

“We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
― Robert F. Kennedy

“We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization - black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love.... What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.”
― Robert F. Kennedy