Stian Ask > Stian's Quotes

“Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”
― Bruce Lee

“Be happy, but never satisfied.”
― Bruce Lee

“You're a monster.
Thanks. Does this mean I get a raise?
No, just a medal. The budget isn't inexhaustable.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“the seed of doubt was there, and it stayed, and every now and then sent out a little root. It changed everything, to have that seed growing. It made Ender listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“Don’t do what you can’t undo, until you’ve considered what you can’t do once you’ve done it.”
― Robin Hobb, Assassin's Apprentice

“Learning is never wrong. Even learning how to kill isn't wrong. Or right. It's just a thing to learn, a thing I can teach you. That's all.”
― Robin Hobb, Assassin's Apprentice

“When you spring to an idea, and decide it is truth, without evidence, you blind yourself to other possibilities.”
― Robin Hobb, Assassin's Apprentice

“A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents. This latter nomenclature, by the way, would be an excellent piece of consciousness-raising for the children themselves. A child who is told she is a 'child of Muslim parents' will immediately realize that religion is something for her to choose -or reject- when she becomes old enough to do so.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“The fight isn't over until you win.”
― Robin Hobb, Royal Assassin

“Death is not the opposite of life, but the opposite of choice.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Errand

“Tomorrow owes you the sum of your yesterdays. No more than that. And no less.”
― Robin Hobb, The Mad Ship

“Stop longing. You poison today’s ease, reaching always for tomorrow.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Errand

“Diplomacy is the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power.”
― Robin Hobb

“For the weakest has but to try his strength to find it, and then he shall be strong.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“I placed no trust in faiths, doctrines, ideologies, institutions. Thus I could stand only upon my own feet. But I was a Pole, molded by Polishness, living in Poland. And so I needed to look deeper for my ‘self,’ in the place where it was no longer Polish but simply human”
― Witold Gombrowicz

“Are you always a smartass?'

Nope. Sometimes I'm asleep.”
― Jim Butcher, Blood Rites

“Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face.”
― Jim Butcher, Storm Front

“Time is an unkind teacher, delivering lessons that we learn far too late for them to be useful. Years after I could have benefited from them, the insights come to me.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“Stop thinking of what you intend to do. Stop thinking of what you have just done. Then, stop thinking that you have stopped thinking of those things. Then you will find the Now, the time that stretches eternal, and is really the only time there is.”
― Robin Hobb, Royal Assassin

“That is the challenge Companion. To take what has happened to you and learn from it. Nothing is quite so destructive as pity, especially self-pity. No event in life is so terrible that one cannot rise above it.
”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Destiny

“Leave the pain behind and let your life be your own again. There is a place where all time is now, and the choices are simple and always your own.

Wolves have no kings”
― Robin Hobb

“Someday is someday, and maybe it will be or maybe it won't. This is a human thing, to worry about things that may or may not come to be. You can't eat meat until you've killed it.”
― Robin Hobb, Assassin's Quest

“Sometimes it seems unfair that events so old can reach forward through the years, sinking claws into one's life and twisting all that follows it. Yet perhaps that is the ultimate justice: we are the sum of all we have done added to the sum of all that has been done to us. There is no escaping that, not for any of us.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Fate

“Look forward, not back. Correct your course and go on. You can't undo yesterday's journey.”
― Robin Hobb, The Mad Ship

“The fight isn't over until you win it, Fitz. That's all you have to remember. No matter what the other man says.”
― Robin Hobb, Royal Assassin

“His absence seemed a solid thing, a burden I must carry in addition to my grief... Yet I knew I would continue to live. Sometimes that knowledge seemed the worst part of my loss.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“Come, hunt with me, the invitation whispers in my heart. Leave the pain behind and let your life be your own again. There is a place where all time is now, and the choices are simple and always your own.
Wolves have no kings.”
― Robin Hobb, Royal Assassin

“Wolves have no kings.”
― Robin Hobb, Royal Assassin