Az > Az's Quotes

“The price of power is pain.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“She began to burn herself again. She found release in the pain; it was comforting, familiar. It was a trade-off she was well used to. Success required sacrifice. Sacrifice meant pain. Pain meant success.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“if the Keju had taught her anything, it was that pain was the price of success.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“Destiny is a myth. Destiny is the only myth. The gods choose nothing. You chose.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“Amateurs obsess over strategy, Irjah had once told their class. Professionals obsess over logistics”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“Your potential, the absolute best you’re capable of—that’s the metric to measure yourself against. Your standards are. Winning is not enough. People can get lucky and win. People can be assholes and win. Anyone can win. But not everyone is the best possible version of themselves.”
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“And that’s what is so insidious about talk. Anyone can talk about himself or herself. Even a child knows how to gossip and chatter. Most people are decent at hype and sales. So what is scarce and rare? Silence. The ability to deliberately keep yourself out of the conversation and subsist without its validation. Silence is the respite of the confident and the strong.”
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“Those who have subdued their ego understand that it doesn’t degrade you when others treat you poorly; it degrades them.”
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“The only real failure is abandoning your principles. Killing what you love because you can’t bear to part from it is selfish and stupid. If your reputation can’t absorb a few blows, it wasn’t worth anything in the first place.”
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“Greatness comes from humble beginnings; it comes from grunt work. It means you’re the least important person in the room—until you change that with results.”
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“I was trapped so terribly inside my own head that I was a prisoner to my own thoughts. The”
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“Attempting to destroy something out of hate or ego often ensures that it will be preserved and disseminated forever.”
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“My friend the philosopher and martial artist Daniele Bolelli once gave me a helpful metaphor. He explained that training was like sweeping the floor. Just because we’ve done it once, doesn’t mean the floor is clean forever. Every day the dust comes back. Every day we must sweep.”
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“Imagine if for every person you met, you thought of some way to help them, something you could do for them? And you looked at it in a way that entirely benefited them and not you. The cumulative effect this would have over time would be profound: You’d learn a great deal by solving diverse problems. You’d develop a reputation for being indispensable. You’d have countless new relationships. You’d have an enormous bank of favors to call upon down the road. That’s what the canvas strategy is about—helping yourself by helping others.”
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“Pride blunts the very instrument we need to own in order to succeed: our mind. Our ability to learn, to adapt, to be flexible, to build relationships, all of this is dulled by pride.”
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“A poet’s function . . . is not to experience the poetic state: that is a private affair. His function is to create it in others.”
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“We talk to fill the void and the uncertainty.”
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“Ego leads to envy and it rots the bones of people big and small.”
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“All of us waste precious life doing things we don’t like, to prove ourselves to people we don’t respect, and to get things we don’t want.”
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“Hate will keep you alive where love fails”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“Cowards make the best torturers. Cowards understand fear and they can use it.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“When they killed him, Mother wouldn't hold her peace, so they slit her throat. I was stupid then, being only nine, and I fought to save them both. But the thorns held me tight. I've learned to appreciate thorns since. The thorns taught me the game. They let me understand what all those grim and serious men who've fought the Hundred War have yet to learn. You can only win the game when you understand that it IS a game. Let a man play chess, and tell him that every pawn is his friend. Let him think both bishops holy. Let him remember happy days in the shadows of his castles. Let him love his queen. Watch him loose them all.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“The way to break the cycle is to kill every single one of the bastards that fucked you over. Every last one of them. Kill them all. Kill their mother, kill their brothers, kill their children, kill their dog.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt,
Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt,
It lies behind stars and under hills,
And empty holes it fills,
It comes first and follows after,
Ends life, kills laughter.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again