I live my life with hope, always hope, that the future will be better than the present, but only as long as I work to make it so.
I am dying. Every day, with every breath I draw, I am closer to the end of my life. For we are born with a finite number of breaths, and each one I take edges the sunlight that is my life toward the inevitable dusk.
Time to hunt?” Cattie-brie cried, satisfied that she had gotten her point across. She rose beside Wulfgar and headed for the door, but she turned her head over her shoulder to face Drizzt one final time, giving him a look that told him that perhaps he should have asked for more from Cattie-brie back in Icewind Dale, before Wulfgar had entered her life.
Nostalgia is possibly the greatest of the lies that we all tell ourselves. It is the glossing of the past to fit the sensibilities of the present. For some, it brings a measure of comfort, a sense of self and of source, but others, I fear, take these altered memories too far, and because of that, paralyze themselves to the realities about them.
When you live with death so close, you come to appreciate life all the more.
There is no greater shackle than self-deception. A man who denies his heart, either through fear of personal consequence – whether regarding physical jeopardy, or self-doubt, or simply of being ostracized – is not free. To go against your values and tenets, against that which you know is right and true, creates a prison stronger than adamantine bars and thick stone walls.
For whatever we do in our lives, discipline and control over our own actions ultimately measure the level of our success.
In the heart, there is no sting greater than watching the struggles of one you love, knowing that only through such strife will that person grow and recognize the potential of his or her existence.
This is the way of the world, but is is not the only way.
He was born a slave, but he was not born to be a slave.
The finest leaders are those who listen more than they talk.
Magic is neither good nor evil. It merely is.
Without satisfaction, he will find no contentment, and without contentment, he will find no joy.
Those who rely on certainties are certain to be disappointed.
I have ridden a dragon!” Tiago protested. “I have eaten a dragon,” Gromph replied. I have slept with a dragon – two! Jarlaxle thought, but did not say, though he couldn’t avoid a grin at the pleasant memory of the wonderful copper dragon sisters, Tazmikella and Ilnezhara.
The world is not static, and if the roots of our perceptions, traditions, hold static, then we are doomed, I say, into destructive dogma.
To any intelligent being, there is no emotion more important than hope. Individually or collectively, we must hope that the future will be better than the past, that our offspring, and theirs after them, will be a bit closer to an ideal society, whatever our perception of that might be.
It is easy to miss the possibility that every person who crosses your path can become an event and a memory, good or bad, to fill in the hours with experience instead of tedium, to break the monotony of the passing moments.
How long lived our memory of you when you are gone? Because in the end, that is the only measure. In the end, when life’s last flickers fade, all that remains is memory. Richness, in the final measure, is not weighed in gold coins, but in the number of people you have touched, the tears of those who mourn your passing, and the fond remembrances of those who continue to celebrate your life. – Drizzt Do’Urden.
Driest displayed the intricate hand and facial combinations of the silent drow code, and he briefly entertained the notion of teaching the language to Belwar. The deep gnome promptly burst into loud and rolling laughter. His dark eyes looked incredulously at Drizzt, and he led the drow’s gaze down to the ends of his arms. With a hammer and a pickaxe for hands, the svirfneblin could hardly muster enough gestures to make the effort worthwhile.