Milen > Milen's Quotes

“... a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“The train brought them home, but books could take them anywhere they imagined.”
― Luke Adam Hawker, The Last Tree: A seed of hope

“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“— Злото си е зло, Стрегобор — изрече сериозно вещерът и се изправи. — По-малко, по-голямо, средно — всичко е едно и също, пропорциите са условни, а границите — размити. Аз не съм свят отшелник, не съм вършил само добро през живота си. Но ако трябва да избирам между едно зло и друго, предпочитам да не избирам изобщо.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Last Wish

“Hubris, man. It’s killed more heroes than monsters ever did.”
― Nicholas Eames, Bloody Rose

“We were giants, once,” he said. “Bigger than life. And now …” “Now we are tired old men,” Clay muttered, to no one but the night. And what was so wrong with that? He’d met plenty of actual giants in his day, and most of them were assholes.”
― Nicholas Eames, Kings of the Wyld

“We were giants once, remember? Kings of the Wyld.”
― Nicholas Eames, Kings of the Wyld

“Solitude can do troubling things to a mind.”
― Nicholas Eames, Bloody Rose

“Evil is Evil. Lesser, greater, middling… Makes no difference. The degree is arbitary. The definition’s blurred. If I’m to choose between one evil and another… I’d rather not choose at all.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Last Wish

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
― Edmund Burke

“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”
― Edmund Burke

“— Няма да си позволя да се тревожа. – увери го Флорънс. — Докато има живот, има и надежда.
— Каква ужасна мисъл! – измърмори господин Брандиш.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

“We were giants, once.”
― Nicholas Eames, Bloody Rose

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Diggers

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“Sleep is good, he said, and books are better.”
― George R. R. Martin

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible

“Steal five dollars and you're a common thief. Steal thousands and you're either the government or a hero.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

“What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

“It was also a room full of books and made of books. There was no actual furniture; this is to say, the desk and chairs were shaped out of books. It looked as though many of them were frequently referred to, because they lay open with other books used as bookmarks.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

“And the nice thing about a stake through the heart was that it also worked on non-vampires.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

“Nothing-to-see is what most of the universe consists of.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

“A man can learn all of an opponent's weaknesses on that board,' said Gilt.
'Really?' said Vetinari, raising his eyebrows. 'Should not he be trying to learn his own?”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

“true freedom is so terrible that only the mad or the divine can face it with open eyes.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

“People were strange like that. Steal five dollars and you were a petty thief. Steal thousands of dollars and you were either a government or a hero.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

“Being an absolute ruler today was not as simple as people thought. At least, it was not simple if your ambitions included being an absolute ruler tomorrow. There were subtleties. Oh, you could order men to smash down doors and drag people off the dungeons without trial, but too much of that sort of thing lacked style and anyway was bad for business, habit-forming and very, very dangerous for your health. A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot vote-yourself-rich system like democracy. At least they could tell the people he was their fault.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

“Freedom may be mankind’s natural state, but so is sitting in a tree eating your dinner while it is still wriggling.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

“An imagination is a terrible thing to bring along.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

“all freedom is limited, artificial, and therefore illusory, a shared hallucination at best. No sane mortal is truly free, because true freedom is so terrible that only the mad or the divine can face it with open eyes.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal