Bryce Courtenay > Quotes

“Sometimes the slightest things change the directions of our lives, the merest breath of a circumstance, a random moment that connects like a meteorite striking the earth. Lives have swiveled and changed direction on the strength of a chance remark.”
― Bryce Courtenay

“First with the head, then with the heart.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“Intelligence is a harder gift. For this you must work, you must practice it, challenge it, and maybe toward the end of your life you will master it. Cleverness is the shadow, whereas intelligence is the substance.
-Doc”
― Bryce Courtenay

“Always in life an idea starts small, it is only a sapling idea, but the vines will come and they will try to choke your idea so it cannot grow and it will die and you will never know you had a big idea, an idea so big it could have grown thirty meters through the dark canopy of leaves and touched the face of the sky.' He looked at me and continued. 'The vines are people who are afraid of originality, of new thinking. Most people you encounter will be vines; when you are a young plant they are very dangerous.' His piercing blue eyes looked into mine.' Always listen to yourself, Peekay. It is better to be wrong than simply to follow convention. If you are wrong, no matter, you have learned something and you grow stronger. If you are right, you have taken another step toward a fulfilling life.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“The power of one is above all things the power to believe in yourself, ofen well beyond any latent ability you may have previously demonstrated. The mind is the athlete, the body is simply the means it uses to run faster or longer, jump higher, shoot straighter, kick better, swim harder, hit further, or box better.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“It is better just to get on with the business of living and minding your own business and maybe, if God likes the way you do things, he may just let you flower for a day or a night. But don't go pestering and begging and telling him all your stupid little sins, that way you will spoil his day.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“. . . besides love, independence of thought is the greatest gift an adult can give a child.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“Pride is holding your head up when everyone around you has theirs bowed. Courage is what makes you do it.”
― Bryce Courtenay

“Let me conclude by saying in my experience the glittering prizes in life come more to those who persevere despite setback and disappointment than they do to the exceptionally gifted who, with the confidence of the talents bestowed upon them, often pursue the tasks leading to success with less determination.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“First with the head, then with the heart, you'll be ahead from the start.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“But I was still alive, and in my book, where there's life, there's hope.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“Never take advice from a donkey.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“sometimes in life doing what we shouldn't do is the emergency”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“When men can be made to hope, then they can be made to win.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“Good conversational debate is an end in itself, and talking for the love of conversation is what makes us human.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“As is so often the case with a legend, every incident has two possible interpretations, the plausible and the one that is molded to suit the making of the myth. Man is a romantic at heart and will always put aside dull, plodding reason for the excitement of an enigma. As Doc had pointed out, mystery, not logic, is what gives us hope and keeps us believing in a force greater than our own insignificance.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“I have found in life that everything, no matter how bad, comes to an end.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“In teaching me independence of thought, they had given me the greatest gift an adult can give to a child besides love, and they had given me that also.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“Winning is a state of mind that embraces everything you do.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“Always listen to yourself... It is better to be wrong than simply to follow convention.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“The man assumes the role of the loner, the thinker and the searching spirit who calls the privileged and the powerful to task. The power of one was the courage to remain separate, th think through the truth and not be beguiled by convention or the plausible arguments of those who expect to maintain power, whatever the cost.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“Absoloodle not”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“Sometimes, very occasionally, you do your best boxing with your mouth.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“every man is an island and at the same time also robinson crusoe.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“You've got to be quick on your feet in this world if you want to survive. Though once you know the rules, it is not too hard to play the game.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“Inside all people there is love, also the need to take care of the other man who is his brother. Inside everyone is a savage, but there is also happening tenderness and compassion.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“I had never seen a prison, nor had I even imagined one, but there is a racial memory in man that instinctively knows of these things. The architecture of misery has an unmistakable look and feel about it.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“. . . God is too busy making the sun come up and go down and watching so the moon floats just right in the sky to be concerned with color . . . only man wants always God should be there to condemn this one and save that one. Always it is man who wants to make heaven and hell. God is too busy training the bees to make honey and every morning opening up all the new flowers for business.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“what is a german? to say a man is a german, what is that? does it tell you if he is a good man? or a bad man? no, my friend, it tells you nothing about a man to say he is german. a man must think what he is inside. what he is on the outside, how can this matter?”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“sweet potatoes in their jackets have a large comfort value built into them”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power Of One

“I learned that in each of us there burns a flame of independence that must never be allowed to go out. That as long as it exists within us we cannot be destroyed.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“I knew then that the person on the outside was only a shell, a presence to be seen and provoked. Inside was the real me, where my tears joined the tears of all the sad people to form the three waterfalls in the night country.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“It's nothing to be ashamed of. There comes a time in everything when you don't know something.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“You can't go feeding your hate on the past, it's not natural.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“Innocents, the meat in a ghastly sandwich between an uncaring society and a vengeful state.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“Generosity overpowers greed.”
― Bryce Courtenay

“my only desire is to teach the word o' man and leave the word o' Gawd to the pulpit men”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Potato Factory

“all i know about the bible is that wherever it goes there's trouble. the only time i ever heard of it being useful was when a stretcher bearer i was with at the battle of dundee told me that he'd once gotten hit by a mauser bullet in the heart, only he was carrying a bible in his tunic pocket and the bible saved his life. he told me that ever since he'd always carried a bible into battle with him and he fled perfectly safe because god was in his breast pocket. we were out looking for a sergeant of the worcesters and three troopers who were wounded while out on a reconnaissance and were said to be holed up in a dry donga. in truth, i think my partner felt perfectly safe because the boer mausers were estimated by the british artillery to be accurate to eight hundred yards and we were at least twelve hundred yards from enemy lines. alas, nobody bothered to tell the boers about the shortcomings of their brand-new german rifle and the mauser bullet hit him straight between the eyes...which goes to prove, you can always depend on british army information not to be accurate, the boers to be deadly accurate, and the bible to be good for matters of the heart but hopeless for those of the head, and finally, that god is in nobody's pocket.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“It's good to be a little frightened. It's good to respect your opponent. It keeps you sharp. In the fight game, the head rules the heart. But in the end the heart is the boss.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“The rapacious white tribe who were arriving in increasing numbers, not only as convicts but also as settlers, wanted to own everything they touched. They slashed and burned the wilderness so that they might graze their sheep and grow their corn. They erected fences around the land they now called their own and which henceforth they were prepared to defend with muskets and sometimes even their lives. They built church steeples and prison walls and homes of granite hewn from the virgin rock and timber cut from the umbrageous mountain forests. They possessed everything upon the island, the wild beasts that grazed upon its surface, the birds that flew over it, the fish that swam in its rushing river torrents and the barking seals resting in the quiet bays and secluded inlets. Everything they thought worthwhile was attached to the notion of ownership.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Potato Factory

“I wish to cup knowledge in my hand and drink it as one drinks water by the side of the stream.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“The joy of a small town lies in its unchanging nature.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“In this world are very few things made from logic alone. It is illogical for man to be too logical. Some things we must just let stand. The mystery is more important than any possible explanation. The searcher after truth must search with humanity. Ruthless logic is the sign of a limited mind. The truth can only add to the sum of what you know, while a harmless mystery left unexplored often adds to the meaning of life. When a truth is not so important, it is better left as a mystery.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“It's who you is when folks knocks at the door of your heart what counts. Hide the past and it gives them what's jealous of you the power to bring you undone.”
― Bryce Courtenay

“Your brain, Peekay, has two functions; it is a place for original thought, but also it is a reference library. Use it to tell you where to look, and then you will have for yourself all the brains that have ever been”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

“The Tragedy of the human condition is that the very things that make us interesting and culturally important and progressively brilliant are our differences; and these are also the principle reasons for our prejudices”
― Bryce Courtenay