Tad Williams Quotes
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To fight a war, you must believe it can accomplish something. We fight this one to save John’s kingdom, or perhaps even to save all of mankind...but isn’t that what we always think? That all wars are useless-except the one we’re fighting now?
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'You have something that might be more use to me than either gold or power-something that in fact brings both in its train.''And what is that?'The count leaned forward. 'Knowledge.'
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The last thing a drunkard loses, you see, is his cunning: it outlasts his soul by a long season.
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Thank you for your news, Princess. It is none of it happy, but only a fool desires cheerful ignorance and I try not to be a fool. That is my heaviest burden.
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Sometimes you men are like lizards, sunning on the stones of a crumbled house, thinking: 'what a nice basking-spot someone built for me.'
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'It would please me your not being obsequious. That is a trait of marketplace people who are selling shoddy goods. I am sure to prefer endless, stupid questions to that.''Ob...obseek...?''Obsequious. Flattering with oiliness. It is not liked by me. In Yiqanuc we say: ‘Send the man with the oily tongue to go and lick the snowshoes.’'
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There are no promises in life, Sludig, but it seems to me smarter to take fewer chances.
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Humans turn the places they live into great crowded piles of mud and stone, like the nests termites build--but what happens when in all the world there are termite hills left but no bush?
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She had been dressed in her sky-blue gown and had been suddenly almost terrible in her completeness-so different from the ragged serving girl who had slept on his shoulder. And yet, the very same girl had been inside that blue dress.
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We trolls say: 'Make Philosophy your evening guest, but do not let her stay the night.'
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If you have not noticed, we are preparing for war. I’m sorry if that inconveniences you.
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'Sharp it away, lad, sharp it away,' the burly guardsman said, making the blade skitter across the whetstone, 'lest otherways ye’ll be a girl afore ye’re a man.'
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Ambitious men never believe others aren’t the same.
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No charm is proof against a dagger in the back.
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She had little doubt that whatever happened to her on this drifting ship was of scant interest to a God who could allow her to reach this sorry state in the first place.
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She realized now that she knew little about people outside the courts of Nabban and Erkynland, although she had always thought herself a shrewd judge of humanity. However, it was a larger and much more complicated world on the other side of the castle walls than she had ever suspected.
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'Thank you, Duke,' the troll said seriously. 'May your god be blessing us indeed. We go into unknown places.''As do all mortals,' Josua added. 'Sooner or later.'
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You can never tell when princes will get squinty on you. You can never tell when they might suddenly feel their blood and go all royal.
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Nothing is without cost. There is a price to all power, and it is not always obvious.
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He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.
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'Do you get tired, singing?' she asked.Gan Itai laughed quietly. 'Does a mother grow tired raising her children? Of course, but it is what I do.'
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The wise man is not waiting for the realness of the world to prove itself to him. How can one be an authority before the experiencing of this realness? My master taught me-and to me it seems chash, meaning correct-that you must not defend against the entering of knowledge.
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If God is all-powerful, then the Devil must be nothing more than a darkness in the mind of God. But if the Devil is something real and separate, than perfection is impossible, and there can be no God... except for the aspirations of fallen angels.
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'Is this being in love?' he suddenly wondered? It was nothing like the ballads he had heard sung-this was more irritating than uplifting.