Samuel Doe > Samuel's Quotes

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“I warn you, if you bore me, I shall take my revenge.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising
I came singing into the sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall! ”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“How shall a man judge what to do in such times?'
'As he has ever judged,' said Aragorn. 'Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

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

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an unuprooted small corner of evil.

Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is... A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
― Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
― Anonymous, The Holy Bible: King James Version

“It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.”
― Albert Einstein

“I will take fate by the throat; it will never bend me completely to its will.”
― Ludwig van Beethoven

“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”
― Maurice Switzer, Mrs. Goose, Her Book

“Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.”
― Winston Churchill

“A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."

[On British Labour politician Stafford Cripps.]”
― Winston S. Churchill, Wealth, War and Wisdom

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one."
— George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)

"Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one."
— Churchill's response”
― George Bernard Shaw

“From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.”
― Winston Churchill, Never Give In! The Best of Winston Churchill's Speeches

“It is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Mov’d earth and heaven, that which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
― Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

“If you don't want anyone to know anything about you, don't write anything.”
― Pete Townshend

“I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.”
― William F. Buckley Jr.

“Decent people should ignore politics, if only they could be confident that politics would ignore them”
― William F. Buckley