Jay > Jay's Quotes

“One rule of thumb in fighting is that crazy can often overcome skill and numbers, because, while a trained fighter might actually enjoy going up against another trained fighter, no one really wants to wrestle with crazy. Crazy doesn’t know when it’s winning. And crazy doesn’t know when to stop. If you can’t pull off crazy, if, for instance, you’re handcuffed in a small van with six armed assailants, stupid is a decent substitute for crazy.”
― Richard Kadrey, Sandman Slim

“When you're facing down multiple attackers, you always want to make the first move. It lets them know that you're ready to fight and that you're crazy enough to get the party started. One rule of thumb in fighting is that crazy can often overcome skill and numbers, because, while a trained fighter might actually enjoy going up against another trained fighter, no one really wants to wrestle with crazy. Crazy doesn't know when it's winning. And crazy doesn't know when to stop. If you can't pull off crazy, if, for instance, you're handcuffed in a small van with six armed assailants, stupid is a decent substitute for crazy.”
― Richard Kadrey, Sandman Slim

“Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other. There may be two equally good, equally gifted, equally beautiful, but there may never be two that love one another equally well.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

“But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“This assumption that she need look for no more devotion now that her beauty had passed proceeded from the fact that she had never realized any love save love as passion. Such love, though it expends itself in generosity and thoughtfulness, though it give birth to visions and to great poetry, remains among the sharpest expressions of self-interest. Not until it has passed through a long servitude, through its own self-hatred, through mockery, through great doubts, can it take its place among the loyalties. Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.”
― John Greenleaf Whittier

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Anything is possible. Everything is gettable. You just have to want it badly enough.”
― Noah Hawley, Before the Fall

“It is not a good fancy,' said the llama. 'What profit to kill men?'
Very little - as I know; but if evil men were not now and then slain it would not be a good world for weaponless dreamers.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim

“I have killed, but I am not a killer because a killer is a monster, and monsters aren’t afraid.”
― James S.A. Corey, Babylon's Ashes

“You tried to help the people of the market. You mostly failed. This is life. The longer you live, the more you fail. Failure is the mark of a life well lived. In turn, the only way to live without failure is to be of no use to anyone. Trust me, I've practiced”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible....”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”
― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

“People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“I also remember catching the eye of the few conscientious objectors in the terminal, the people opposed to the war but afraid to speak up. There was no hate in their eyes, only pity. Sadness. Knowledge that I might be necessary, but that we shouldn’t be proud that I was necessary. That’s how I saw myself and my company by the end of my second tour. I didn’t hate what we did so much as hate the need for it all. No one should applaud this. We should bow our heads not in thanks but in sadness.”
― Hugh Howey, Company

“The trick to happiness wasn’t in freezing every momentary pleasure and clinging to each one, but in ensuring one’s life would produce many future moments to anticipate.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“I will take responsibility for what I have done,” Dalinar whispered. “If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer