Bonhomous

“Every morning, he would bring her a boulder and have her try to cut it in half with the Rippling Sword. Every morning, she failed, and he took the stone away, only to bring a new one the next day. She’d thrown her training sword aside in disgust. “I can’t do it,” she had said. “Been waiting for you to say that,” he’d responded. He had taken her to a cave behind a waterfall, where he had kept all of the stones she had tried and failed to cut. There were the marks of her failure: slashes in the rocks where her madra had cut. The scars started faint, but they got wider and deeper. And the stones got bigger. “This is what you did yesterday,” he’d said, pointing to the largest rock, the one with the deepest cut. “I can’t wait to see what you do tomorrow.”
― Will Wight, Ghostwater

“On the cue 'five aunts' I had given at the knees a trifle, for the thought of being confronted with such a solid gaggle of aunts, even if those of another, was an unnerving one. Reminding myself that in this life it is not aunts that matter, but the courage that one brings to them, I pulled myself together.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Mating Season

“A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

“She wasn't interested in telling other people's futures. She was interested in going out and finding her own.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys