Cassandra > Cassandra's Quotes

“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.
This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad in a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight.”
― Jack London, The Call of the Wild

“Those who cannot be aggressive are hunted down while they shiver and hide because the night is dark.”
― Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, In the Forests of the Night

“You can't argue with the fools in the world. It's better to let them have their way, then trick them when they're not paying attention.”
― Terry Goodkind

“I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.”
― Jack London

“A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.”
― Jack London

“Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.”
― Jack London

“And how have I lived? Frankly and openly, though crudely. I have not been afraid of life. I have not shrunk from it. I have taken it for what it was at its own valuation. And I have not been ashamed of it. Just as it was, it was mine.”
― Jack London

“He had learned well the law of club and fang, and he never forewent an advantage or drew back from a foe he had started on the way to Death. He had lessoned from Spitz, and from the chief fighting dogs of the police and mail, and knew there was no middle course. He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed.”
― Jack London, The Call of the Wild

“But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as a man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called -- called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.”
― Jack London, The Call of the Wild

“A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of laughter more terrible than any sadness-a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.”
― Jack London

“His conclusion was that things were not always what they appeared to be. The cub's fear of the unknown was an inherited distrust, and it had now been strengthened by experience. Thenceforth, in the nature of things, he would possess an abiding distrust of appearances.”
― Jack London, White Fang

“Why, if there is anything in supply and demand, life is the cheapest thing in the world. There is only so much water, so much earth, so much air; but the life that is demanding to be born is limitless. Nature is a spendthrift. Look at the fish and their millions of eggs. For that matter, look at you and me. In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives. Could we but find time and opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit of the unborn life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations and populate continents. Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things it is the cheapest. Everywhere it goes begging. Nature spills it out with a lavish hand. Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousand lives, and it's life eats life till the strongest and most piggish life is left.”
― Jack London, The Sea Wolf

“The first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence.”
― Jack London, The Call of the Wild

“But this is not a world of free freights. One pays according to an iron schedule--for every strength the balanced weakness; for every high a corresponding low; for every fictitious god-like moment an equivalent time in reptilian slime. For every feat of telescoping long days and weeks of life into mad magnificent instants, one must pay with shortened life, and, oft-times,
with savage usury added.”
― Jack London

“Love as thou wilt”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Chosen

“That which yields is not always weak.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

“When Love cast me out, it was Cruelty who took pity upon me”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

“If I had to fall from Cassiel's grace, at least I know it took a courtesan worthy of Kings to do it.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

“It's funny, how one can look back on a sorrow one thought one might well die of at the time, and know that one had not yet reckoned the tenth part of true grief.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

“It is a fine line, in all of us, between civilization and savagery. To any who think they would never cross it, I can only say, if you have never known what it is to be utterly betrayed and abandoned, you cannot know how close it is.”
― Jacqueline Carey

“Yes my lord, but questions are dangerous, for they have answers”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

“We pay for sins we do not remember, and seek to do a will we can scarce fathom. That is what it is, to be a god's chosen. ”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Avatar

“This is the secret that none dares tell who fights for a cause. Dying, we are all alike.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

“I wish sometimes that the gods would either choose better, or make their wishes clearer”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Chosen

“To have a traitor for an ally is to have an enemy in waiting”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

“It's funny how despair can soon become an old companion”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

“Wars come and go; politics endure.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

“There's more to clothing than just adornment. It does more than merely change how the world perceives us. It changes how we perceive ourselves.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Naamah's Kiss

“Your dreaming self seeks to tell you something your waking ears will not hear”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Chosen

“Nothing spoils idle pleasure like too much awareness”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart