yishn > yishn's Quotes

“To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.”
― Victor Hugo

“If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it's found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don't care, but they're massively outnumbered by the people who do.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“The human face has limited space. If you fill it with laughter there will be no room for crying.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“I ain't grouchy,” Teft snapped. “I just have a low threshold for stupidity.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance

“The only time you seem honest is when you’re insulting someone!”
“The only honest things I can say to you are insults.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance

“When did you get so peppy?” she shouted.
“Ever since I assumed I was dead, then I suddenly wasn't.”
“Then remind me to try to kill you once in a while,” she snapped. “If I succeed, it will make me feel better, and if I fail, it will make you feel better. Everyone wins!”
― Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance

“Sometimes the prize is not worth the costs. The means by which we achieve victory are as important as the victory itself.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“Just because I do not accept the teachings of the devotaries does not mean I've discarded a belief in right and wrong."
"But the Almighty determines what is right!"
"Must someone, some unseen thing, declare what is right for it to be right? I believe that my own morality -- which answers only to my heart -- is more sure and true than the morality of those who do right only because they fear retribution.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“Unknowing ignorance is preferable to informed stupidity.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker

“Love and loss,” he said, “are like a ship and the sea. They rise together. The more we love, the more we have to lose. But the only way to avoid loss is to avoid love. And what a sad world that would be.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Conjuring of Light

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“To love the journey is to accept no such end. I have found, through painful experience, that the most important step a person can take is always the next one.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“Inappropriate?” Pattern said. “Such as … dividing by zero?”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“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

“Drehy,” Kaladin said, “you are literally courting a man.”
“So?” Drehy said.
“Yeah, what are you saying, Kal?” Skar snapped.
“Nothing! I just thought Drehy might empathize….”
“That’s hardly fair,” Drehy said.
“Yeah,” Lopen added. “Drehy likes other guys. That’s like … he wants to be even less around women than the rest of us. It’s the opposite of feminine. He is you could say extra manly.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“You are not worse for your association with the world, but it is better for its association with you.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“the cynical could afford the luxury of their cynicism because of the stability of the system they mocked.”
― John Scalzi, The Consuming Fire

“Confidence isn’t about knowing you’re right. Confidence is about knowing you can make it right.”
― John Scalzi, The Consuming Fire

“Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“Hush now, my dear one . . . be not afraid. Night comes upon us, but sunlight will break. Sleep now, my dear one . . . let your tears fade. Darkness surrounds us, but someday we’ll wake. . . .”
― Brandon Sanderson, Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell

“What would it take?" she asked. "For you to see a miracle instead of a coincidence?" "It would take a miracle,obviously," Silence said, picking up her knife. "Instead of just a coincidence.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell

“What is god but a being with more power than those below them can comprehend? With understanding more vast than others can imagine? If you do not believe such a being exists above you, then surely you are a god, Tal'kamar.”
― James Islington, An Echo of Things to Come

“Sometimes the world’s most brilliant ideas don’t work. Doesn’t make them any less insightful.”
― Andrew Rowe, On the Shoulders of Titans

“Hope can be a source of strength, but when it fails to deliver what I want, I’ve found a good degree of stubbornness to be an appropriate substitute”
― Andrew Rowe, On the Shoulders of Titans

“In fact, I didn’t really want to have final words at all, unless they involved something like, “At last, I have transcended beyond the boundaries of my frail human existence.”
― Andrew Rowe, On the Shoulders of Titans

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“But he’d found that imaginary things were often the only items of real substance in people’s lives.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker

“That's what war is," Cobb told me. "A bunch of sorry, desperate fools on both sides, just trying to stay alive. That's the part that those stories you love leave out, isn't it? It's always more convenient when you can fight a dragon. Something you don't have to worry you'll start caring about.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Starsight