""...In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say 'I have learned' and 'I have loved,' you will also be able to say 'I have been happy.'""
— Arthur C. Clarke Gentry Lee (Rama II)

"Happiness is the highest form of wisdom."
— Jacqueline Carey (Kushiel's Mercy)

"Both tolerance and respect are empty virtues until we actually understand whatever it is we are supposed to be tolerating or respecting."
— Stephen R. Prothero

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"People have a habit of inventing fictions they will believe wholeheartedly in order to ignore the truth they cannot accept."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"The Creator made women to please the eye, and to boggle the mind."
— Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time: Boxed Set)

"Love as thou wilt"
— Jacqueline Carey (Kushiel's Chosen)

"Nowhere does it say free speech is carte blanche to be a jerk. And don't cheapen real free speech by hijacking an honourable concept bought dearly with people's lives just to get a little spotlight. Spotlights run hot, and they can burn."
— Karen Traviss

"I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones)

"I've looked at the world for quite
a few years now and I've found that if I don't laugh, I'll
probably end up crying."
- Prince Kheldar of Drasnia"
— David Eddings

"You must realize that no matter how intently you count your breaths you will still perceive what is in your line of vision, since your eyes are open, and you will hear the normal sounds about you, as your ears are not plugged. And since your brain likewise is not asleep, various thought forms will dart about your mind. Now, they will not hamper or diminish the effectiveness of zazen unless, evaluating them as "good", you cling to them or, deciding they are "bad", you try to check or eliminate them."
— Philip Kapleau Roshi (The Three Pillars of Zen: Teaching, Practice, and Enlightenment)

"If you fall into poverty, live that way without grumbling - then your poverty will not burden you. Likewise, if you are rich, live with your riches. All this is the functioning of Buddha-nature. In short, Buddha-nature has the quality of infinite adaptability."
— Philip Kapleau Roshi (The Three Pillars of Zen: Teaching, Practice, and Enlightenment)

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."
— Laozi

"I don't like it when I outweigh my men."
— Patricia Briggs (Moon Called)

"MS. THOMPSON, it said in heavy block letters, PLEASE KEEP YOUR FELINE OFF MY PROPERTY. IF I SEE IT AGAIN, I WILL EAT IT."
— Patricia Briggs (Moon Called)

"Sometimes I have the urge to conquer large parts of Europe."
— Patricia Briggs (Cry Wolf)

"A werewolf tossed me against a giant packing crate while I was trying to rescue a frightened young girl who'd been kidnapped by an evil witch and a drug lord."
— Patricia Briggs (Moon Called)

"“That’s a pretty lame superhero name,” I told him. - Mercy

“Scooby-Doo is already taken,” he said with dignity. “Anything else sounds lame in comparison.” - Stefan"
— Patricia Briggs (Bone Crossed)

"There are no safe choices. Only other choices. There are no safe choices

"
— Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

"What happens if your choice is misguided,
You must try to correct it
But what if it’s too late? What if you can’t?
Then you must find a way to live with it."
— Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

""How can my ankles and arms be obscene?" "
— Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

"Shall I tell you a story? A new and terrible one? A ghost story? Are you ready? Shall I begin? Once upon a time there were four girls. One was pretty. One was clever. One charming, and one...one was mysterious. But they were all damaged, you see. Something not right about the lot of them. Bad blood. Big dreams. Oh, I left that part out. Sorry, that should have come before. They were all dreamers, these girls. One by one, night after night, the girls came together. And they sinned. Do you know what that sin was? No one? Pippa? Ann? Their sin was that they believed. Believed they could be different. Special. They believed they could change what they were--damaged, unloved. Cast-off things. They would be alive, adored, needed. Necessary. But it wasn't true. This is a ghost story remember? A tragedy. They were misled. Betrayed by their own stupid hopes. Things couldn't be different for them, because they weren't special after all. So life took them, led them, and they went along, you see? They faded before their own eyes, till they were nothing more than living ghosts, haunting each other with what could be. With what can't be. There, now. Isn't that the scariest story you've ever heard?"
— Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

"Because you don't notice the light without a bit of shadow. Everything has both dark and light. You have to play with it till you get it exactly right."
— Libba Bray

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."
— Marilyn Monroe

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
— Mark Twain

""By Tink's diaphram...!""
— Kim Harrison

"Ugliness is an illusion, gentlemen. Like beauty. Like color. All depends on the light. The only reality is action."
— Karen Traviss (Star Wars Republic Commando True Colors)

"The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale."
— Arthur C. Clarke

""... But just being alive is not the most important thing. Life must have quality to be worthwhile.""
— Arthur C. Clarke Gentry Lee Rama II

"Faith informed by thought and observation."
— Arthur C. Clarke Gentry Lee Rama II