Nick > Nick's Quotes

“You cannot taste a memory without tainting it with whom you have become.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Tress of the Emerald Sea

“We humans love telling each other stories. . . we've done just that in caves, and in amphitheaters, and in the Globe, and in kitchens around campfires, and in the trenches. Every culture, every country, every type pf person in the world tell stories. They've been whispered and sung and written down on scraps of paper and they always, always been an indelible part of our very humanity.”
― Brianna Labuskes, The Librarian of Burned Books

“This pestilence cooked away pretense and showed people’s souls, as surely as it eventually showed their bones.”
― Christopher Buehlman, Between Two Fires

“The only thing I say to God is my daughter's names; and it is not a prayer, it's a rebuke.”
― Christopher Buehlman, Between Two Fires

“So one of the fallen, whose name was Baal-Zebuth, said, “Let us wear their greatest men like skins, and when they speak, they will speak our words; they will speak of wars and purgings, and of dashing the babe’s head. We will turn their understanding so they make their Christ a god of war, and we will cause them to set navies to the seas and armies under the moon with generals whose eyes glow like brands, and we will stir Turk and Christian alike to madness by our own deeds, and by our own hands will we hasten the death of men.”

And great was the noise of flies around him as he walked the earth.”
― Christopher Buehlman, Between Two Fires

“every myth, every fable must have some roots. Something lies among those roots.'
'It does. ... Most often a dream, a wish, a desire, a yearning. Faith that there are no limits to possibility. And occasionally chance.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Miecz przeznaczenia

“The Sword of Destiny has two edges. You are one of them. The other is... Death”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Sword of Destiny

“A choice which should be respected, for it is the holy and irrefutable right of every woman.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Sword of Destiny

“Look, if you don't make a fool of yourself over animals, at least in private, you aren't to be trusted.”
― T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead

“The dead don’t walk. Except, sometimes, when they do.”
― T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead

“I am never sure what to think of Americans. Their brashness can be charming, but just when I decide that I rather like them, I meet one that I wish would go back to America, and then perhaps keep going off the far edge, into the sea.”
― T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead

“Sometimes it's hard to know if someone is insulting or just an American.”
― T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead

“Headache is always preferable to heartache, and if you’re focusing on not throwing up, you aren’t thinking about how the friends of your youth are dying around you.”
― T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead

“But when you think about it there’s no time in our lives we haven’t been able to endure. If there was such a time, we wouldn’t have made it this far.”
― Kim Un-su, The Cabinet

“Conversely, primitive humans were much more spiritual beings. They worked when the sun was out, and they dreamed and rested once it set. In other words, in order to live properly, you have to follow divine providence and live half your life working, and the other half dreaming.”
― Kim Un-su, The Cabinet

“Death is when the balance in your bank account of time reaches zero. You’ve either used up all your time, or someone has taken it from you. That’s all it is. You simply have no money to revive your bankrupt life.”
― Kim Un-su, The Cabinet

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.

-Words of Muad'dib by Princess Irulan.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny," Paul said. "They’re organized power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“You’re my safe harbor in an endless stormy sea. You’re my shady willow on a sunny day. You’re sweet music in a distant room. You’re unexpected cake on a rainy day. You’re my bright penny on the roadside, you are worth more than the moon on the long night walk. You are sweet wine in my mouth, a song in my throat and laughter in my heart.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“People want order, this kind or some other. They sit in the prison of their hungers and see that war has become the sport of the rich. That's a dangerous form of sophistication. It's disorderly.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“I live in an apocalyptic dream. My steps fit into it so precisely that I fear most of all I will grow bored reliving the thing so exactly.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“They’re trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“There exists no separation between gods and men; one blends softly casual into the other. —Proverbs of Muad’Dib”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“Every man carries his own past with him," Hayt said.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“Here lies a toppled God-
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal,
A narrow and a tall one.

-TLEILAXU EPIGRAM”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“o bitter stench of funeral-still for Muad'dib.
No knell nor solemn rite to free the mind
From avaricious shadows.
He is the fool saint,
The golden stranger living forever
On the edge of reason.
Let your guard fall and he is there!
His crimson peace and sovereign pallor
Strike into our universe on prophetic webs
To the verge, of a quiet glance -- there!
Out of bristling star-jungles:
Mysterious, lethal, an oracle without eyes,
Catspaw of prophecy, whose voice never dies!
Shai-hulud, he awaits thee upon a strand
Where couples walk and fix, eye to eye,
The delicious ennui of love.
He strides through the long cavern of time,
Scattering the fool-self of his dream.
-The Ghola's Hymn”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah