Audrey Sim > Audrey's Quotes

“Parents always make their worst mistakes with their oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“Intellectual understanding does not always bring visceral belief.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“The criminal misuse of time was pointing out the mistakes. Catching them―noticing them―that was essential. If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement. The part of the man's statement that was true, however, was about the uselessness of speaking up. If I know that the teacher is wrong, and say nothing, then I remain the only one who knows, and that gives me an advantage over those who believe the teacher.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“...you seemed to be listening to me, not to find out useful information, but to try to catch me in a logical fallacy. This tells us all that you are used to being smarter than your teachers, and that you listen to them in order to catch them making mistakes and prove how smart you are to the other students. This is such a pointless, stupid way of listening to teachers that it is clear you are going to waste months of our time before you finally catch on that the only transaction that matters is a transfer of useful information from adults who possess it to children who do not, and that catching mistakes is a criminal misuse of time.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“No point in getting emotional about anything. Being emotional didn't help with survival. What mattered was to learn everything, analyze the situation, choose a course of action, and then move boldly. Know, think, choose, do. There was no place in that list for "feel." Not that Bean didn't have feelings. He simply refused to think about them or dwell on them or let them influence his decisions, when anything important was at stake.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“One cannot seperate truth from actions...Physically inevitable or not, truth stands above all things. It is independant of who has the best army, who can deliver the longest sermons, or even who has the most priests. It can be pushed down, but it will always surface. Truth is the one thing you can never intimidate.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Elantris

“Remember, the past need not become our future as well.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Elantris

“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“Put two men together, and they will find something to argue about. Gather them into groups, and one group will find reason to oppress or attack another.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“Tradition is the blind witness they use to condemn us,”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“if he believed he didn’t have to care, then he didn’t need to hurt when he failed.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“An excuse is what you make after the deed is done, while a justification is what you offer before.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“Does one deserve to have evil done to her by consequence of putting herself where evil can reach her?”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“They spoke very little of their mutual feelings: pretty phrases and warm attentions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“At first I did not love you, Jude; that I own. When I first knew you I merely wanted you to love me. I did not exactly flirt with you; but that inborn craving which undermines some women's morals almost more than unbridled passion--the craving to attract and captivate, regardless of the injury it may do the man--was in me; and when I found I had caught you, I was frightened. And then--I don't know how it was-- I couldn't bear to let you go--possibly to Arabella again--and so I got to love you, Jude. But you see, however fondly it ended, it began in the selfish and cruel wish to make your heart ache for me without letting mine ache for you.”
― Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

“It is rarely that the pleasures of the imagination will compensate for the pain of sleeplessness,”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“What a fool she must have been ever to have had anything to do with the man!”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“She's brim full of poetry - actualized poetry, if I may use the expression. She lives what paper-poets only write...”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

“Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Hope clouds observation.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was--there is no man can tell what. Methought I was,--and methought I had,--but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom...”
― William Shakespeare

“All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“How characteristic of your perverse heart that longs only for what happens to be out of reach.”
― Pierre A.F. Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses

“I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“Now I understand that one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you've believed in all your life aren't true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“You may be right in believing that if you study hard, one day you might become fluent in English. But you will still look Chinese, and when people meet you, they’ll see a Chinese girl no matter how well you speak English. You’ll always be expected to know Chinese, and if you don’t, I’m afraid they will not respect you as much.”
― Adeline Yen Mah, Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter

“keep in mind that whenever you are in a crisis, you are in the midst of danger as well as oportunity.”
― Adeline Yen Mah, Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter

“Don't laugh at the spinsters, dear girls, for often very tender, tragic romances are hidden away in the hearts that beat so quietly under the sober gowns, and many silent sacrifices of youth, health, ambition, love itself, make the faded faces beautiful in God's sight. Even the sad, sour sisters should be kindly dealt with, because they have missed the sweetest part of life, if for no other reason.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women