You have to understand that only the very worst end up here: the ones whose anger made them kill, and who felt no sorrow or guilt after the act; those so obsessed with themselves that they turned their backs on the sufferings of others, and left them in pain; those whose greed meant that others starved and died. Such souls belong here, because they would find no peace elsewhere. In this place, they are understood. In this place, their faults have meaning. In this place, they belong.
I believe in evil because I have touched it, and it has touched me.
Sometimes, I think that I concerned myself so much with the possibility of their loss that I never truly took pleasure in the fact of their existence.
And Nurd, who had never had a mother and father, and who had never loved or been loved, marvelled at the ways in which feeling so wonderful could also leave one open to so much pain. In a strange way, he envied Samuel even that. He wanted to care about someone so much that it could hurt.
Astronomers who were recently sifting through thousands of signals from Sagittarius B2, a big dust cloud at the center of our galaxy, found a substance there called ethyl formate, which is the chemical responsible for the flavor of raspberries, and the smell of rum, the drink popular with pirates. Therefore, our galaxy tastes a bit of raspberries and smells of rum, which is nice.
The nature of humanity, its essence, is to feel another’s pain as one’s own, and to act to take that pain away,. There is a nobility in compassion, a beauty in empathy, a grace in forgiveness.
You must learn to control your impulses,” he said. “A sword wants to be used. It wants to draw blood. That is why it was forged, and it has no other purpose in the world. If you do not control it, then it will control you.
Each of us has only one life to live, and one life to give. There is no glory in throwing it away where there is no hope.
If you listen hard enough, there’s almost no such thing as silence: there’s just noise that isn’t very loud yet.
Sometimes we need our pain. We need it to call our own.
David tried to give a form to the beast at the heart of the poem but found that he could not. It was more difficult than it appeared, for nothing quite seemed to fit. Instead, he could only conjure up a half-formed being that crouched in the cobwebbed corners of his imagination where all the things that he feared curled and slithered upon one another in the darkness.
Families,” said Angel, with some feeling. “Can’t live with them, can’t have them killed without complications.
Sometimes he would forget her, but in forgetting he would remember her again, and the ache for her would return with a vengeance.
He had a love of books, for in books was recorded the knowledge of all those who had gone before him.
Drowning men will drag you down if you let them. Sometimes, to survive, you have to let them sink.
Names did have a power, if they were used in the right way.
You did it because you wanted to. No one can make you do evil. You had evil inside you, and you indulged it. Men will always indulge it.
He will say less than he means, and conceal more than he reveals.
Being clever is not just about how much you know, but about knowing that you really don’t know very much at all.
Every individual spends a lifetime trying to disprove Copernicus by placing him- or herself at the heart of existence, but a small core of diehards manages to turn it into an art.