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Stop defining yourself by what you can’t do. Why don’t you consider what you didn’t lose?”
He was not so big as he had once seemed to me. If I kept on growing, I would probably be taller than he before another year was out. Nor was he massively muscled, but instead had a compactness to him that was a readiness of both muscle and mind.
this description reminds me of my dad
“The fight isn’t over until you win it, Fitz. That’s all you have to remember. No matter what the other man thinks. Or the horse.”
I don’t think you’d want her pity. It’s a poor substitute for love.”
He had found the thing he could do and come to do it. I like that in a man. Knowing what he can do, and doing it. So I put him in charge.
Instead she stepped closer. She seized my hair, jerked my head up to face her. “Newboy!” she hissed in fury. “I should drop you right here.”
yes!!!
“What made things go wrong in the first place?” When I did not reply, he asked me, “Did not you yourself just tell me that you courted her as a boy, when she considered your offer a man’s? She was looking for a man. So don’t go sulking about like a thwarted child. Be a man.” He drank down half his brandy, then refilled both our cups. “How?” I demanded. “The same way you’ve shown yourself a man elsewhere. Accept the discipline, live up to the task. So you cannot see her. If I know anything of women, it does not mean she does not see you. Keep that in mind. Look at yourself. Your hair looks like
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To finally confront the worst there is, to look it squarely in the face and say, “I know you. You have hurt me, almost to death, but still I live. And I will go on living.”
One can only walk so far from one’s true self before the bond either snaps, or pulls one back.
“Our own ambitions and tasks that we set for ourselves, the framework we attempt to impose upon the world, is no more than a shadow of a tree cast across the snow. It will change as the sun moves, be swallowed in the night, sway with the wind, and when the smooth snow vanishes, it will lie distorted upon the uneven earth. But the tree continues to be.
Trust is not trust until it is complete.
He shook his head, slowly this time. “History is what we do in our lives. We create it as we go along.” He smiled enigmatically. “The future is another kind of history.”
What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbor, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I change the world today?” “This is philosophy, Fool. I have never had time to study such things.”
It’s not the kind of work a man does that says he can be proud or not. It’s how he does it. Be proud of yourself.”
“Sometimes,” Chade observed, “it would be much easier to die for one’s king than to give one’s life to him.”
“Too much on my mind. Too many directions to think in all at once. I sometimes feel that if I had time to focus my mind on just one problem, I could solve it. And then go on to solve the others.” “Every man believes that. It isn’t so. Slay the ones you can as they come to hand, and after a while you get used to the ones you can do nothing about.”
Life shared is better.
