Robert Jordan

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.

In wars, boy, fools kill other fools for foolish causes.

Nobody tells us how to be men. We just are.

In the Borderlands, sheepherder, if a man has the raising of a child, that child is his, and none can say different.

Soon comes the day all shall be free. Even you, and even me. Soon comes the day all shall die. Surely you, but never I.

Tonight you will eat fish. Tomorrow, you may die.

If a woman does need a hero, she needs him today, not tomorrow.

Death comes for us all. We can only choose how to face it when it comes.

There's no time for winking at the men when you're busy bailing the boat.

It seems to me that kings — and queens — can be fools when they forget what they are and act like who they are, but they’re worse when they only remember what they are and forget who.

Conrad Aiken

Walk with me world, upon my right hand walk,
speak to me Babel, that I may strive to assemble
of all these syllables a single word
before the purpose of speech is gone.

Separate we come, and separate we go, And this be it known, is all that we know.

And the shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves
Interlace with low voices and footsteps and sunlight
To divide us forever.

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;

All lovely things will have an ending,
All lovely things will fade and die,
And youth, that's now so bravely spending,
Will beg a penny by and by.

Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam . . .
And after a while they will fall to dust and rain;
Or else we will tear them down with impatient hands;
And hew rock out of the earth, and build them again.

We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain,
We do not remember the red roots whence we rose,
But we know that we rose and walked, that after a while
We shall lie down again.

James Baldwin

I have never seen myself as a spokesman. I am a witness.

The wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.

Does the law exist for the purpose of furthering the ambitions of those who have sworn to uphold the law, or is it seriously to be considered as a moral, unifying force, the health and strength of a nation?

Ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know, not whether or not the country is just, but whether or not it has any love for justice, or any concept of it.

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

James Dickey

Drunk on the wind in my mouth,
Wringing the handlebar for speed,
Wild to be wreckage forever.

Dust fanned in scraped puffs from the earth
Between his arms, and blood turned his face inside out,
To demonstrate its suppleness
Of veins, as he perfected his role.

I have just come down from my father.
Higher and higher he lies
Above me in a blue light
Shed by a tinted window

Here they are. The soft eyes open.
If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood.
If they have lived on plains
It is grass rolling
Under their feet forever.

These hunt, as they have done
But with claws and teeth grown perfect,
More deadly than they can believe.

Jean de La Fontaine

I of animals make choice that men may get instruction from their voice.

History some truths contains, which well may serve for lessons.

Learn now that every flatterer lives at the cost of those who give him credit.

The opinion of the strongest is always the best.

By the work one knows the workman.

Patience and time do more than strength or passion.

Dressed in the lion's skin, the ass spread terror far and wide.

Beware, as long as you live, of judging people by appearances.

Kindness effects more than severity.

Man is so made that when anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish.

To live lightheartedly but not recklessly; to be gay without being boisterous; to be courageous without being bold; to show trust and cheerful resignation without fatalism — this is the art of living.

One should oblige everyone to the extent of one's ability. One often needs someone smaller than oneself.

Theodore Roethke

What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

My secrets cry aloud.
I have no need for tongue.

And soon a branch, part of a hidden scene,
The leafy mind, that long was tightly furled,
Will turn its private substance into green,
And young shoots spread upon our inner world.

I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,
As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland;
Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance..

They teased out the seed that the cold kept asleep, —
All the coils, loops and whorls...

Snail, snail, glister me forward,
Bird, soft-sigh me home,
Worm, be with me.
This is my hard time.

Voice, come out of the silence.
Say something

A lively understandable spirit
Once entertained you.
It will come again.

Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse...

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Sir Walter Raleigh

Every fool knoweth that hatreds are the cinders of affection.

No man is wise or safe, but he that is honest.

If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy Love.

Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may happily strike out his teeth.

Our passions are most like to floods and streams;
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.

Shall I, like an hermit, dwell
On a rock or in a cell?

Remember...that if thou marry for beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which perchance will never last nor please thee one year; and when thou hast it, it will be to thee of no price at all, for the desire dieth when it is attained, and the affection perisheth when it is satisfied.

Silence in love bewrays more woe
Than words, though ne’er so witty:
A beggar that is dumb, you know,
May challenge double pity.

Oliver Goldsmith

Man wants but little here below, Nor wants that little long.

A nightcap decked his brows instead of bay,
A cap by night — a stocking all the day!

A book may be very amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity.

The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love,
The matron's glance that would those looks reprove.

As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,—
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.

A flattering painter, who made it his care
To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are.

For he who fights and runs away
May live to fight another day;
But he who is in battle slain
Can never rise and fight again.

Robert Browning

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be..

The lark's on the wing…

Truth, that's brighter than gem,
Trust, that's purer than pearl, —
Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe, — all were for me
In the kiss of one girl.

He gathers earth's whole good into his arms;
Standing, as man now, stately, strong and wise,
Marching to fortune, not surprised by her.

Deeds let escape are never to be done.

Rats!
They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,

Who hears music feels his solitude
Peopled at once.

Have you found your life distasteful?
My life did and does smack sweet.

How good is man's life, the mere living!
How fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses
Forever in joy!

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
"By thy long gray beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?"

The knight's bones are dust,
And his good sword rust;
His soul is with the saints, I trust.

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

Blest hour! it was a luxury — to be!

Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree.