James > James's Quotes

“The gods only go with you if you put yourself in their path. And that takes courage.”
― Mary Stewart, The Crystal Cave

“I think there is only one. Oh, there are gods everywhere, in the hollow hills, in the wind and the sea, in the very grass we walk on and the air we breathe, and in the bloodstained shadows where men like Belasius wait for them. But I believe there must be one who is God Himself, like the great sea, and all the rest of us, small gods and men and all, like rivers, we all come to Him in the end.”
― Mary Stewart, The Crystal Cave

“Knowledge, I suppose, blocked the gates of vision.”
― Mary Stewart, The Crystal Cave

“Every life has death and every light has shadow. Be content to stand in the light and let the shadow fall where it will.”
― Mary Stewart, The Hollow Hills

“It is not true that women cannot keep secrets. Where they love, they can be trusted to death and beyond, against all sense and reason. It is their weakness, and their great strength. ”
― Mary Stewart, The Hollow Hills

“I am nothing, yes; I am air and darkness, a word, a promise. I watch in the crystal and I wait in the hollow hills. But out there in the light I have a young king and a bright sword to do my work for me, and build what will stand when my name is only a word for forgotten songs and outworn wisdom, and when your name, Morgause, is only a hissing in the dark.”
― Mary Stewart, The Hollow Hills

“Every man carries the seed of his own death, and you will not be more than a man. You will have everything; you cannot have more…”
― Mary Stewart, The Hollow Hills

“Time spent looking back in anger is time wasted.”
― Mary Stewart, The Last Enchantment

“Not as others had wanted to learn, for power or excitement, or for the prosecution of some enmity or private greed; but because he had seen, darkly with a child's eyes, how the gods move with the winds and speak with the sea and sleep in the gentle herbs; and how God himself is in the sum of all that is on the face of the lovely earth.”
― Mary Stewart, The Last Enchantment

“Arsenius the Great: I have often regretted the things I have said, but I have never regretted my silence.”
― Evgheni Vodolazkin, Laurus

“So you say faith is not enough for you and you want knowledge, too. But knowledge does not involve spiritual effort; knowledge is obvious. Faith assumes effort. Knowledge is repose and faith is motion.”
― Evgenij Vodolazkin, Laurus

“Angels do not tire, said the Angel, because they do not scrimp on their strength. If you are not thinking about the finiteness of your strength, you will not tire, either. Know, O Areseny, that only he who does not fear drowning is capable of walking on water.”
― Evgenij Vodolazkin, Laurus

“They embraced in parting. There were tears in the merchant’s eyes:
“I do not like parting.”
“Life consists of partings,” said Arseny. “But you can rejoice more fully in companionship when you remember that.”
“But I would (the merchant Vladislav blew his nose) gather up all the good people I’ve met and never let them go.”
“I think then they would quickly become mean,” smiled Ambrogio. (p. 238)”
― Evgenij Vodolazkin, Laurus

“And so I, my love, am going to the very center of the earth. I am going to the point that is closest of all to Heaven. If my words are destined to fly all the way to Heaven, then it will happen there. And all my words will be about you.”
― Evgenij Vodolazkin, Laurus

“The three men walked on and were met by ever more new saints. The saints were not exactly moving or even speaking, but the silence and immobility of the dead were not absolute. There was, under the ground, a motion that was not completely usual, and a particular sort of voices rang out without disturbing the sternness and repose. The saints spoke using words from psalms and lines from the lives of saints that Arseny remembered well from childhood. When they drew the candles closer, shadows shifted along dried faces and brown, half-bent hands. The saints seemed to raise their heads, smile, and beckon, barely perceptibly, with their hands. A city of saints, whispered Ambrogio, following the play of the shadow. They present us the illusion of life. No, objected Arseny, also in a whisper. They disprove the illusion of death.”
― Eugene Vodolazkin, Laurus

“A miracle can be the result of effort multiplied by faith.”
― Evgenij Vodolazkin, Laurus

“Each of us repeats Adam’s journey and acknowledges, with the loss of innocence, that he is mortal. Weep and pray, O Arseny. And do not fear death, for death is not just the bitterness of parting. It is also the joy of liberation.”
― Evgenij Vodolazkin, Laurus

“What is a soul?” Arseny asked.
It is what the Lord breathes into the body, what distinguishes us from rocks and plants. The soul makes us living beings, O Arseny. I compare the soul to a flame that originates in an earthly candle but has not earthly nature as it strives skyward, toward its kindred elements”
― Evgenij Vodolazkin, Laurus

“Being a mosaic does not necessarily mean scattering into pieces, answered Elder Innokenty. It is only up close that each separate little stone seems not to be connected to the others. There is something more important in each of them, O Laurus: striving for the one who looks from afar. For the one who is capable of seizing all the small stones at once. It is he who gathers them with his gaze. That, O Laurus, is how it is in your life, too. You have dissolved yourself in God. You disrupted the unity of your life, renouncing your name and your very identity. But in the mosaic of your life there is also something that joins all these separate parts: it is an aspiration for Him. They will gather together again in Him.”
― Evgenij Vodolazkin, Laurus

“People encounter one another (thought Ambrogio), bumping into one another like atoms. They do not have their own trajectories and so their actions are random. But when taken together, those random events (so thought Ambrogio) were their own form of consistency, which could be predictable in certain parts. Only He Who created everything knows this in full.”
― Evgenij Vodolazkin, Laurus

“Or, your body has become unsuitable, prepare to leave it; know that this shell is imperfect.”
― Evgenij Vodolazkin, Laurus

“I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself. --From the Introduction”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“All have their worth and each contributes to the worth of the others.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

“And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

“For so sworn good or evil an oath may not be broken and it shall pursue oathkeeper and oathbreaker to the world's end.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

“The Light failed; but the Darkness that followed was more than loss of light.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

“To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz