Sage > Sage's Quotes

“The world may not go on forever. But that does not mean we cannot try to make tomorrow better.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Blades

“Dogs don’t—they’re not like us. They’re … pure in a way we aren’t.”
― T.J. Klune, Under the Whispering Door

“[Dogs] take a piece of our souls with them when they leave.”
― T.J. Klune, Under the Whispering Door

“Change is a slow flower to bloom. Most of us will not see its full radiance. We plant it not for ourselves, but for future generations.

But it is worth tending to. Oh, it is so terribly worth tending to.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Miracles

“A better world comes not in a flood, but with a steady drip, drip, drip.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Miracles

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell

“The Divine may have created many hells,” he says, “but I think they pale beside what men create for themselves.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

“We don't get to choose many things. What happens to us, if we live or die, or who we love. But we can at least choose to admit, sometimes, that things are good. And sometimes, that is enough.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett

“...the object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The soul might be within the eyes, but the subconscious, the matter of their behavior; that is in the hands. Watch a man's hands, and you watch his heart.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

“In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Yet for all their self-professed civility, your rulers will gladly spend a soldier’s life to better aid their posturing, to keep the cost of a crude good low. They will send the children of others off to die and only think upon it later to grandly and loudly memorialize them, lauding their great sacrifice. Civilization is but the adoption of this cowardly method of murder.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Blades

“To be a power is to make constant war upon one’s neighbors.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Blades

“People don’t change. Nations don’t change. They get changed. Reluctantly. And not without a fight.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Miracles

“My definition of an adult is someone who lives their life aware they are sharing the world with others. My definition of an adult is someone who knows the world was here before they showed up and that it'll be here well after they walk away from it.

My definition of an adult, in other words, is someone who lives their life with a little fucking perspective.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Miracles

“What a tremendous sin impatience is, he thinks. It blinds us to the moment before us, and it is only when that moment has passed that we look back and see it was full of treasures.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Miracles

“You asked me if I wanted to forget. The answer’s no. I want to keep it. Even if it hurts.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Miracles

“All things are subservient to time.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Miracles

“I have a fork and a spoon, but never a knife. When there’s meat they cut it up for me ahead of time, as if I’m lacking manual skills or teeth. I have both, however. That’s why I’m not allowed a knife.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

“We should always make time for the things we like. If we don't, we might forget how to be happy.”
― T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

“Change often starts with the smallest of whispers. Like-minded people building it up to a roar.”
― T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

“Humanity is so weird. If we’re not laughing, we’re crying or running for our lives because monsters are trying to eat us. And they don’t even have to be real monsters. They could be the ones we make up in our heads. Don’t you think that’s weird?”
― T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

“A home isn't always the house we live in. It's also the people we choose to surround ourselves with.”
― T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

“It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Hell wasn't a major reservoir of evil, any more then Heaven, in Crowley's opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“I don't see what's so triffic about creating people as people and then gettin' upset cos' they act like people", said Adam severely. "Anyway, if you stopped tellin' people it's all sorted out after they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive.”
― Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Seems to me the place to fight cruelty is where you find it, and the place you give help is where you see it needed.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

“But I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.”
― Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass