Exile (The Dark Elf, #2; The Legend of Drizzt, #2 )

by R.A. Salvatore

How do you measure centuries when a single hour seems a day and a single day seems a year?

If your companions mantle upon you neither pity nor blame, then do not place either burden upon your own shoulders!”

Joy multiplies when it is shared among friends, but grief diminishes with every division. That is life.

We all are prisoners at one time or another in our lives, prisoners to ourselves or to the expectations of those around us. It is a burden that all people endure, that all people despise, and that few people ever learn to escape.

The physical powers of the body cannot be separated from the rationale of the mind and the emotions of the heart. They are one and the same, a compilation of a singular being. It is in the harmony of these three—body, mind, and heart—that we find spirit.

But it is a resilient thing, this flame of spirit, indomitable and ever-striving. In some, at least, it will survive, to the tyrant’s demise.

Spirit. In every language in all the Realms, surface and Underdark, in every time and every place, the word has a ring of strength and determination. It is the hero’s strength, the mother’s resilience, and the poor man’s armor. It cannot be broken, and it cannot be taken away. This I must believe.