More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Those who claim to be “ready for anything” are overpacked and invariably unprepared for the one obstacle every adventurer must eventually face—disappointment.
Never was a line untangled by heaves and tugs. An unwanted knot requires a flexible stratagem to undo. One must give a little here to make some progress there. So it is with most of life’s snarls.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to hang you.” The tall sergeant sucked his teeth in sympathy with Adam’s alarm. “Oh, but don’t worry. It’s only for a little while.”
Some of my crew are convinced an old rope will continue to hold purely because it has held for so long. As if a ship was buoyed by precedent. As if the past promised a future.
Anger that survives until morning is either righteous or insidious. Either way, it must be dealt with.
Retreat is an ancient art. Generals have studied it; conscripts practiced it. Nearly fifty years of survival has taught me that often the best time to run away is shortly before you arrive.
Perhaps we are not responsible for the crimes of our fathers, but make no mistake, we are beneficiaries of those crimes, which makes us answerable to its victims.
“You don’t seem worried. Why aren’t you worried?” “Maybe I’m just getting used to this view. Or maybe… I came here to make my fortune, or steal it. I felt worthless and thought that jangling pockets might help me to feel differently about myself. So, I gathered a little gold, put it all in a pile, and waited for the trumpets to sound. But I still felt the same way, like a worthless imposter, a bad forgery of a person. And I kept on feeling that way about myself until I discovered that I felt something for you, which grew into sympathy for the hods, and then for my sister, too, who’d always
...more
“It’s quite a steal, when you think about it. I would’ve died a hundred times for my kids. Just the once seems a bargain.”
I think it’s perfectly all right to be frightened. Sometimes the fear of change is just an expression of love for the life you had.
Never was a rough road smoothed by looking backward; never was a great height shrunk by looking down.
True conspiracies are inflexible and susceptible to discovery, but imaginary plots are ever evolving and, as a result, invulnerable. That is to say, conspiracies are perishable, paranoia is not.
“Luc Marat will underestimate him, just as I did, and he won’t realize his mistake until his port is on fire and his debtors have foreclosed on his home, leaving him nothing, nothing but wistfulness for a time before he met that tick of a man named Thomas Senlin.”
Not all political feuds are heated. The diplomatic bond between some factions is like the unhappily wedded pair who, having endured many decades of infraction and contention, no longer see the need to vocalize their revulsion. They can bicker well enough in silence.
Ambivalence is the midwife of happiness. Do not make promises when a shrug will suffice.
Pilgrims are encouraged to remember that the principal consumer of sheep is not wolves but shepherds.
When you think little of yourself, everyone else’s opinion of you becomes more important than your own.
Neglect never patched a crack, nor denial plugged a hole. Do not forget your imperfections; they have not forgotten you.
“Does everything have to be complicated? Can’t I just enjoy a pudding?” “Of course you can! We don’t have to know everything about everything to enjoy the world. I don’t have to know all about stamens and ovules to enjoy the fragrance of a flower, or how to build a house to appreciate a roof over my head. But understanding nothing, or very little of the world, and having no desire to understand more than you already do, well, that invites entitlement. What was a privilege becomes a right. And that, I think, is dangerous.”
