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All men can love a forbidden thing, generally speaking, and in most cases knowledge is precisely that; lost knowledge even more so.
In reality, time as we experience it is merely an ebb and flow, more circular than it is direct. Social trends and stigmas change, and the direction knowledge moves is not always forward.
an empire could sit successfully only upon a chair of three legs: subjugation, desperation, and ignorance.
Beware the man who faces you unarmed. If in his eyes you are not the target, then you can be sure you are the weapon.
Really, there was nothing more dangerous than a woman who knew her own worth.
In this case, though, this particular girl was unequivocally hopeless. She had a boyfriend she seemed to actually like. She had good intentions, too, which were the most unfortunate.
“Because the problem with knowledge, Miss Rhodes, is its inexhaustible craving. The more of it you have, the less you feel you know,”
Maybe after a lifetime of being useless, Tristan simply wanted to be used.
“Can’t you strike a deal with the devil if it means getting what you want?”
“No one here is good. Knowledge is carnage. You can’t have it without sacrifice.”
“Everyone’s perception is flawed. They have standards drilled into them by cultural propaganda. Nothing anyone sees is real—only how they perceive it.”
There were so many ways to break and so few of them heroic or noble.
“Check the wards yourself if you don’t believe me.” “I already did.” She paused again anyway. “The pipes, really?” “What, you don’t grasp the fundamentals of homeownership, Rhodes?”
The world was filled with poets who thought a woman’s love had unmade them.
“A flaw of humanity,” said Parisa, shrugging as they walked. “The compulsion to be unique, which is at war with the desire to belong to a single identifiable sameness.”
“There is nothing so destructive as thought, and especially not one that can never be rescinded. The moment a group of people decide they can be rid of someone permanently, what do you suppose happens next?”
You’re the kind of beauty that drives men to warfare. To madness.”
The child told routinely of his worthlessness was now a man bereft of fantasy, lacking the inventiveness to give him a broader scope. Ironically, it was his own nature that crippled him most.
Presumably at a certain level of privilege, trivial things like people’s lives and well-being were insignificant details, trifling costs to be considered briefly and then, in the interest of productivity, cast aside for the greater good. Thoughts and prayers.
The primary principle of magic remains unfailingly true: it always comes at a cost. There is a price for all of this privilege, and to choose it necessitates the dignity to pay.”
The truest truths: Mortal lifetimes were short, inconsequential. Convictions were death sentences. Money couldn’t buy happiness, but nothing could buy happiness, so at least money could buy everything else. In terms of finding satisfaction, all a person was capable of controlling was himself.
“Theoretically, men are a disaster. As a concept, I unequivocally reject them.”
How would Caesar have made Brutus pay if he had lived?
life has a way of breaking its promises to children.
“It was real for me!” “It was real for me, too.” Most of it. Some of it. More of it than he felt it wise to confess.
