Nyah Dalrymple

“She did not blench: maiden of the Rohirrim, child of kings, fair but terrible. A swift stroke she dealt, skilled and deadly... the huge shape crashed to ruin, vast wings outspread, crumpled on the earth; and with its fall the shadow passed away. A light fell about her, and her hair shone in the sunrise.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“Are you aware that centuries will pass, and mankind will proclaim with the lips of its wisdom and science that there is no crime and consequently no sin either, but only the hungry. 'Feed them, and then ask virtue of them!' — that is what will be inscribed upon the banner they will raise against you and before which your temple will come crashing down.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Life wants to be lived, and I live it, even though it goes against logic. Very well, so I don’t believe in the order of things, but the sticky leaf-buds1 that open in spring are dear to me, as is the blue sky, as are certain people whom, would you believe it, sometimes one loves one knows not why, and as are certain human achievements in which one may perhaps have ceased to have any faith, but which for old time’s sake one treasures in one’s heart.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“You couldn’t keep sidling up to death and dipping your toe in. Eventually it grabbed your ankle and tried to pull you under.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House