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I would not have you follow me, but walk at my side.
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Being a king was not about pleasing people. It was about controlling them.
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You always take for granted what you have until it is gone. And then you realize how much value it truly held in your life.
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Deeds may speak more compellingly than words,but I believe words have their place too. A man who has both is gifted indeed.
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The darkest prisons were those of the mind.
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To have power and contentment at the same time, that is a rare thing indeed.
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She knew what such grief was like and she had built her own defenses high over the years. But if you raised them too much, they became a prison and in the end you drowned with no one to hear you scream.
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Done was done and could not be changed, but the future was a different matter.
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Your enemies have neither the proof nor the backbone to stand against you, but say something often enough in vulnerable ears and incredulity turns to belief.
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In the end, it is not the stones that matter, but the people who dwell within them.
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She had become an expert at wearing masks, so much so that sometimes it was difficult to find her true self beneath the layers.
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It came to him that life moved in circles like the ripples radiating from a stone cast into a pool. . . Now he was on the outer ring of the last ripple, journeying to fulfill the cycle. Or perhaps the cycle was already complete and he was about to cast another stone.
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Sometimes love strikes like lightning, and its power is as blinding. Other times it comes gently, creeps up on you unawares and covers you like a blanket.
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The light was muted gray in the moment before sunrise and the birdsong was a hymn to the new day and all the glorious business of living in the moment.
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Weep now, but tomorrow be strong. Remember who we are and that whatever else is taken from us, they will never strip our honour and our pride.
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You fall over, you get up again.
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Grief was just the moment before you tied the thread and began the next one.
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Sometimes a river runs on the surface, and sometimes it runs underground, but always it is present. Even if you do not see it, you can feel it.
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The rain whispered down, soft as the touch of cobwebs, shrouding the green of the land in swathes of clinging grey. Maude had grown accustomed to the damp climate, to the clouds that constantly swept in, heavy and moist, off the Irish Sea. She had become used to hearing the soft, guttural tongue of the native Gaels in place of French and the stretched vowels of the English; to feeling as if she was living on the edge of the world, where the seasons moved, but time stood still. And always it rained.
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There were some parts of himself that he would probably never find because he dared not go looking for them in the shadows where she had cast them.
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When the need is so great, no matter how much love you pour into a bowl, it will never be full. Or sometimes it is damaged, and the love all runs out through the hole in the bottom.
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The language of power was exercised in more than just words. It was presence and thought; it was gesture and timing.
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We must all sleep alone in the tomb, my love, but in life we are joined as one flesh - as our children attest.
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Let your deeds be your bond, not your promises and cajolery.