Maloy > Maloy's Quotes

“The love of knowledge is a kind of madness.”
― C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

“The Three Kinds of Pride are: (1) thinking I am better than the other(s); (2) thinking I am worse than the other(s); and (3) thinking I am just as good as the other(s).”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

“Boredom is a mask frustration wears.”
― Neal Stephenson, Anathem

“There is a Zen story about a man riding a horse that is galloping very quickly. Another man, standing alongside the road, yells at him, "Where are you going?" and the man on the horse yells back, "I don't know. Ask the horse." I think that is our situation. We are riding many horses that we cannot control.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, Being Peace

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
― Isaac Asimov

“And it happened all the time that the compromise between two perfectly rational alternatives was something that made no sense at all.”
― Neal Stephenson, Anathem

“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“It is what you don't expect... that most needs looking for.”
― Neal Stephenson, Anathem

“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“My home is not a place, it is people.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar

“No man is brave that has never walked a hundred miles. If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet.”
― Patrick Rothfuss

“If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.”
― H. L. Mencken

“I saw my earlier selves as different people, acquaintances I had outgrown. I wondered how I could ever have been some of them.”
― Roger Zelazny, The Courts of Chaos

“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The trouble with life was that you didn’t get a chance to practice before doing it for real.”
― Terry Pratchett, Pyramids

“The reward for toil had been more toil. If you dug the best ditches, they gave you a bigger shovel.”
― Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum

“All things are defined by names. Change the name, and you change the thing.”
― Terry Pratchett, Pyramids

“The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mists

“What do you despise? By this are you truly known.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Nothing paralyses a man so well as choice.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Wheel of Osheim

“Smile, breathe and go slowly.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“No, what he didn't like about heroes was that they were usually suicidally gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

“Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the discworld. Tourist, Rincewind had decided, meant 'idiot'.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“I have a story to tell you. It has many beginnings, and perhaps one ending. Perhaps not. Beginnings and endings are contingent things anyway; inventions, devices. Where does any story really begin? There is always context, always an encompassingly greater epic, always something before the described events, unless we are to start every story with “BANG! Expand! Sssss…,” then itemize the whole subsequent history of the universe before settling down, at last, to the particular tale in question. Similarly, no ending is final, unless it is the end of all things…”
― Iain M. Banks, The Algebraist

“Inside every sane person there's a madman struggling to get out," said the shopkeeper. "That's what I've always thought. No one goes mad quicker than a totally sane person.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

“If I were you, I'd sue my face for slander.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

“He moved in a way that suggested he was attempting the world speed record for the nonchalant walk.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic