"Neither refuse to give help when it is needed,... nor refuse to accept it when it is offered."
— Lloyd Alexander (The Book of Three)

" "Morgant?" Taran asked, turning a puzzled glance to Gwydion. "How can there be honor for such a man?"
"It is easy to judge evil unmixed," replied Gwydion. "But, alas, in most of us good and bad are closely woven as the threads on a loom; greater wisdom than mine is needed for the judging.""
— Lloyd Alexander (The Black Cauldron)

"Child, child, do you not see? For each of us comes a time when we must be more than what we are."
— Lloyd Alexander (The Castle of Llyr)

"It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating."
— Oscar Wilde

"When you really want something to happen, the whole universe conspires so that your wish comes true."
— Paulo Coelho

"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.
"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity."
— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

"I wish you would be more true to your demographic profile. Life is confusing enough."
— Tony Kushner

"Long ago I yearned to be a hero without knowing, in truth, what a hero was. Now, perhaps, I understand it a little better. A grower of turnips or a shaper of clay, a Commot farmer or a king--every man is a hero if he strives more for others than for himself alone.
Once you told me that the seeking counts more than the finding. So, too, must the striving count more than the gain."
— Lloyd Alexander (The High King)

"They's lots of work in this world that aint never paid for. But the accounts gets balanced anyway. In the long run. A man that contracts for work and then dont pay for it, the world will reckon with him fore it's out. With the worker too. You live long enough and you'll see it. They's a ledger kept that the pages dont never get old nor crumbly nor the ink dont never fade. If it dont balance then they aint no right in this world and if they aint then where did I hear of it at? Where did you? Only way it wont is you start retribution on you own. You start retribution on you own you'll be on you own. That man up there ain goin to help you. Aint no use even to ask."
— Cormac McCarthy (The Stonemason)

"The rain falls upon the just
And also on the unjust fellas
But mostly it falls upon the just
Cause the unjust have the just's umbrellas"
— Cormac McCarthy (The Stonemason)

"I don't mean to be like some old guy from the olden days who says, "I walked thirty miles to school every morning, so you kids should too." That's a statement born of envy and resentment. What I'm saying is something quite different. What I'm saying is that by having very little, I had it good. Children need a sense of pulling their own weight, of contributing to the family in some way, and some sense of the family's interdependence. They take pride in knowing that they're contributing. They learn responsibility and discipline through meaningful work. The values developed within a family that operates on those principles then extend to the society at large. By not being quite so indulged and "protected" from reality by overflowing abundance, children see the bonds that connect them to others."
— Sidney Poitier (The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography)

"Forgiveness works two ways, in most instances. People have to forgive themselves too. The powerful have to forgive themselves for their behavior. That should be a sacred process."
— Sidney Poitier (The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography)

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
— C.S. Lewis

"She had to tell somebody, and Matthew would do. He would not be particularly interested, she knew, but she would tell him anyway. She had to share her joy, as Lou knew that joy unshared was a halved emotion, just as sadness and loss, when borne alone, were often doubled."
— Alexander McCall Smith (Espresso Tales)

"The adventure is over. Everything gets over, and nothing is ever enough. Except the part you carry with you. It's the same as going on a vacation. Some people spend all their time on a vacation taking pictures so that when they get home they can show their friends evidence that they had a good time. They don't pause to let the vacation enter inside of them and take that home."
— E.L. Konigsburg (From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler)

"Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad."
— George Orwell (1984)