Nick Ayers > Nick's Quotes

“Virtue is what happens when someone has made a thousand small choices requiring effort and concentration to do something which is good and right, but which doesn't come naturally. And then, on the thousand and first time, when it really matters, they find that they do what's required automatically. Virtue is what happens when wise and courageous choices become second nature.”
― N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters

“It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

“No one can become and remain a theologian unless he is compelled again and again to be astonished at himself.”
― Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction

“Foolish is the man, and there are many such men, who would rid himself or his fellows of discomfort by setting the world right, by waging war on the evils around him, while he neglects that integral part of the world where lies his business, his first business, namely, his own character and conduct.”
― George MacDonald, Hope of the Gospel

“The sin he dwells in, the sin he will not come out of, is the sole ruin of a man. His present, his live sins, those pervading his thoughts and ruling his conduct; the sins he keeps doing, and will not give up; the sins he is called to abandon, and clings to; the same sins which are the cause of his misery, though he may not know it, these are they for which he is even now condemned.”
― George MacDonald, The Hope of the Gospel

“Would that I had the courage to depart, this place or this life, or to stand openly against the wrongness that is the world of these, my kin. To seek an existence that does not run afoul to that which I believe, and to that which I hold dear faith is truth.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Homeland

“Montolio tilted his head helplessly against Drizzt's unending stream of pessimism. It pained him deeply to see the good-hearted drow so scarred. 'He might indeed,' Montolio said, a bit more harshly than he had intended, 'but the loss of life is only great to those who chance to live it! Let your arrow come in low and catch the huddler on the ground, I say. His death would not be so tragic!”
― R.A.Salvatore

“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“In a cruel land, you either learned to laugh at cruelty or spent your life weeping;”
― Robert Jordan, A Crown of Swords

“Courage is a well,' Viendre said at Elayne's ear, 'deep in some, shallow in others. Deep or shallow, wells go dry eventually, even if they fill again later. You will face what you cannot face. Your spine will turn to jelly, and your vaunted courage will leave you weeping in the dust. The day will come.”
― Robert Jordan, Winter's Heart