Ship of Magic Quotes

“For the weakest has but to try his strength to find it, and then he shall be strong.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“One must plan for the future and anticipate the future without fearing the future.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“What you are born to be, you will be, whether it be priest or sailor. So step up and be it. Let them do nothing to you. Be the one who shapes yourself. Be who you are, and eventually all will have to recognize who you are, whether they are willing to admit it or not.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“Somehow," she said coldly, "you have confused profitable and not profitable for right and wrong. I, however, have not.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“When you borrow trouble against what might be, you neglect the moment you have now to enjoy. The man who worries about what will next be happening to him loses this moment in dread of the next, and poisons the next with pre-judgment.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“Many will rant and rave against the garment fate has woven for them, but they pick it up and don it all the same, and most wear it to the end of their days. You... you would rather go naked into the storm.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“Refuse the anxiety. When you borrow trouble against what might be, you neglect the moment you have now to enjoy. The man who worries about what will next be happening to him loses this moment in dread of the next, and poisons the next with pre-judgment.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“As long as you believe it is impossible, you close your mind to understanding it.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“It is the nature of humans that we tend to pass our pain along. As if we could get rid of it by inflicting an equal hurt on someone else.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“Only my pain is more silent than my anger.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“I can see that you go through life athwart it. You see the flow of events, you are able to tell how you could most easily fit yourself into it. But you dare to oppose it. And why? Simply because you look at it and say, 'this fate does not suit me. I will not allow it to befall me.'" Amber shook her head, but her small smile made it an affirmation. "I have always admired people who can do that. So few do. Many, of course, will rant and rave against the garment fate has woven for them, but they pick it up and on it all the same, and most wear it to the end of their days. You... you would rather go naked into the storm.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“There was always something to be learned from any experience, no matter how horrendous. As long as a man kept sight of that, his spirit could prevail against anything. It was only when one gave in and believed the universe to be nothing more than a chaotic collection of unfortunate or cruel events that one’s spirit could be crushed.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“The man who worries about what will next be happening to him loses this moment in dread of the next, and poisons the next with pre-judgement.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“But that is not true for all folk. Some folk are meant to argue with fate. And win.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“I sleep like an old woman now, she thought to herself. In fits and starts. It isn’t sleeping and it isn’t waking and it isn’t rest.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“if something made a man feel bad then he must determine what about it troubled him, and eliminate that. Simply to suffer the discomforts of guilt did not indicate a man had improved himself, only that he suspected he harbored a fault.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“I don't think I can stand it much longer,” he warned her. “Something will have to give way. And I fear it will be me… I've just been living from day to day. Waiting for something or someone else to change the situation… I think I need to make a real decision. I believe I need to take action on my own.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“That no man can truly imagine being happy and that's why happiness isn't for sale here.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“It was a terrible division, to feel such need for someone, and yet angry that need existed.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“This was what it took for you to find your manhood?”
“It was never lost,” he said flatly. “You simply couldn’t recognize it, because I wasn’t you. I wasn’t big and harsh. I was me.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“Words deserted Wintrow. He stared at his father and floundered through thoughts, trying to find some common ground where he could begin reasoning with him. He could not. Despite the blood bond between them, this man was a stranger, and his beliefs were so utterly different from all Wintrow had embraced that he felt no hope of reaching him.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“When I was younger, it was like life was a beautiful gift, wrapped in exquisite paper and adorned with ribbons. And I loved it, even though all I knew of it was the outside of the package. But in the last year or so, I’ve finally started to see there is something even better inside the package. I’m learning to see past the fancy wrappings, to the heart of things.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“You and I, we are like buds grafted onto a tree. We can grow true to ourselves, but only so much as our roots will allow us”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“Perhaps men are a trick Sa played on this world. ‘All other things I shall make vast and beautiful and true to themselves,’ perhaps he said. ‘Men alone shall be capable of being petty and vicious and self-destructive. And for my cruelest trick of all, I shall put among them men capable of seeing these things in themselves.’ Do you suppose that is what Sa did?”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“At the moment of deciding not to argue further, he had given up all emotional investment in the situation. He had withdrawn his anma into himself as he had been taught to do, divesting it of his anger and offense as he did so. It was not that these emotions were unworthy or inappropriate; it was simply that they were wasted upon the man. He swept his mind clean of reactions to the filthy blanket. By the time he reached the foredeck, he had regained not just calmness, but wholeness.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“What you are born to be, you will be, whether it be priest or sailor. So step up and be it. Let them do nothing to you. Be the one who shapes yourself.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“Althea had never known that misery could achieve perfection. Only now, as she sat staring at her emptied glass, did she grasp how completely wrong her world had become. Things had been bad before, things had been flawed, but it was only today that she had made one stupid decision after another until everything was as completely wrong as it could possibly be.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“Gankis lifted an arm to point at the distant shale cliffs. "And in the face of it there were thousands of little holes, little what-you-call-'ems..."
"Alcoves," Kennit supplied in an almost dreamy voice. "I call them alcoves, Gankis. As would you, if you could speak your own mother tongue.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“It was not that she was a better-tempered person, she decided detachedly. It was that her anger had learned a terrible patience. What good was wasting words on a petty and tyrannical second mate? He was a little yapping dog. She was a tigress. One did not waste snarls on such a creature. One waited until one could snap his spine with a single blow.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“When the mainstay of one's world is taken away, it's only natural to cling to all the rest, to try desperately to keep things as close to the way they were as one can." He shook his head sorrowfully. "But no one can ever go back to yesterday.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic