Zhihao Liu > Zhihao's Quotes

“Whatever worth while comes to you, won’t be through the channels you were searching last year.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“Then I’d fill them with the mystique that their planet had really been a secret training ground to produce just such superior beings as themselves. And all the while, I’d show them what such superior beings could earn: rich living, beautiful women, fine mansions… whatever they desired.” The Baron began to nod. “The way the Sardaukar live at home.” “The recruits come to believe in time that such a place as Salusa Secundus is justified because it produced them—the elite.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“The gravel paths were moist and the grass was wet with dew. The battery fired twice and the air came each time like a blow and shook the window and made the front of my pajamas flap. I could see the guns but they were evidently firing directly over us. It was a nuisance to have them there but it was a comfort that they were no bigger.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“Perhaps wars weren’t won any more. Maybe they went on forever. Maybe it was another Hundred Years’ War.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“While he was still repeating the Confiteor amid the indulgent laughter of his hearers and while the scenes of that malignant episode were still passing sharply and swiftly before his mind he wondered why he bore no malice now to those who had tormented him. He had not forgotten a whit of their cowardice and cruelty but the memory of it called forth no anger from him. All the descriptions of fierce love and hatred which he had met in books had seemed to him therefore unreal. Even that night as he stumbled homewards along Jones's Road he had felt that some power was divesting him of that suddenwoven anger as easily as a fruit is divested of its soft ripe peel.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“He wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld. He did not know where to seek it or how, but a premonition which led him on told him that this image would, without any overt act of his, encounter him. They would meet quietly as if they had known each other and had made their tryst, perhaps at one of the gates or in some more secret place. They would be alone, surrounded by darkness and silence, and in that moment of supreme tenderness he would be transfigured. He would fade into something impalpable under her eyes and then in a moment, he would be transfigured. Weakness and timidity and inexperience would fall from him in that magic moment.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man