- Frodo: I wish it need not have happened in my time.
- Gandalf: So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
"‘Stuff your eyes with wonder,’ he said, ‘live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.’"
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
"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
- Meg Murry: Do you think things always have an explanation?
- Mrs Murry: Yes. I believe that they do. But I think that with our human limitations we're not always able to understand the explanations. But you see, Meg, just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.
- Meg Murry: I like to understand things.
- Mrs Murry: We all do. But it isn't always possible.
"Now if I’d seen him, really there, really alive, it’d be in me like a fever. If I thought there was some god who really did care two hoots about people, who watched ‘em like a father and cared for ‘em like a mother […] You wouldn’t find me just being gen’rally nice in the hope that it’d all turn out right in the end, not if that flame was burning in me like an unforgivin’ sword. And I did say burnin’, Mister Oats, ‘cos that’s what it’d be. You say that you people don’t burn folk and sacrifice people any more, but that’s what true faith would mean, y’see? Sacrificin’ your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin’ the truth of it, workin’ for it, breathin’ the soul of it. That’s religion. Anything else is just…is just bein’ nice. And a way of keepin’ in touch with the neighbours."
— Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum
"Love one another. Be foolish about it. Love is the foolishness of men, and the wisdom of God."
— Victory Hugo, Les Miserables
"No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us. What a great burden of guilt men have!"
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden
"
Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, “Why, why, why?”
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.
— Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle
"Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
