Tom Willis > Tom's Quotes

“The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“An event is not any more intrinsically intelligible or unintelligible because of the pace at which it moves. For a man who does not believe in a miracle, a slow miracle would be just as incredible as a swift one. The Greek witch may have turned sailors to swine with a stroke of the wand. But to see a naval gentleman of our acquaintance looking a little more like a pig every day, till he ended with four trotters and a curly tail, would not be any more soothing. It might be rather more creepy and uncanny.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

“But when first the two black dragons sprang out of the fog upon the small clerk, they had merely the effect of all miracles – they changed the universe. He discovered the fact that all romantics know – that adventures happen on dull days, and not on sunny ones. When the cord of monotony is stretched most tight, it it breaks with a sound like song.”
― G. K. Chesterton

“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“Always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do?”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

“He moved in a way that suggested he was attempting the world speed record for the nonchalant walk.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

“There is no slave but the creature that wills against its Creator.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.”
― Mother Theresa of Calcutta

“As large as worlds. As old as Time. As patient as a brick.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

“The short conversation that follows eventually led to a tree religion. Its tenet of faith was this: a tree that was a good tree and led a clean decent and upstanding life could be assured of a future life after death. If it was very good indeed it would eventually be reincarnated as five thousand rolls of lavatory paper.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

“Do you think I care if Aslan dooms me to death?” said the King. “That would be nothing, nothing at all. Would it not be better to be dead than to have this horrible fear that Aslan has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in and longed for? It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

“If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name. For the rest: my loves, my hates, down even to my deepest desires, I can no longer say whether these emotions are my own, or stolen from those I once so desperately wished to be.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

“They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

“I have great faith in fools - self-confidence my friends will call it.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Marginalia

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“You haven't really been anywhere until you've got back home.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

“If you break little promises, you'll break big ones.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Modern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Knew Too Much

“to him that is pitiless the deeds of pity are ever strange and beyond comprehension.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

“All get what they want; they do not always like it.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Magician's Nephew

“By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“We cannot build the future by avenging the past.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“The dark is generous and it is patient and it always wins – but in the heart of its strength lies its weakness: one lone candle is enough to hold it back.
Love is more than a candle.
Love can ignite the stars.”
― Matthew Stover, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

“There is one fairly good reason for fighting - and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a great wickedness, perhaps the greatest wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man started them, then is the time when you might have a sort of duty to stop them. ”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by the ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, many unavailing sorrows and regrets.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“They made me see that the world was beautiful if you were beautiful, and that you couldn't get unless you gave. And you had to give without wanting to get.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“They'll not blame me. They'll not object to me. They'll not mind what I do, if it's wrong. I'm only Mr. Dick.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“When you die it's the same as if everybody else did too.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
― C.S. Lewis