Орсон Скотт Кард цитаты

страница 17

„Он свинья. - Свиньи в целом вполне приличный народ.
- Ты прав, я к ним несправедлив.“

„Земля - это непрекращающийся треск цикад, свист ветра и пение птиц.“

„Я есть то, что я помню.“

„Любовь — это богатство, которое ты можешь иметь только в том случае, когда все враги твои истреблены. До этого же, каждый кого ты любишь – заложник, ослабляющий твое бесстрашие и подкупающий трезвость твоего рассудка.“

“She got out of the car in a smooth motion that [he] found attractive precisely because it did not seem designed to make men watch her do it.”

“A liar sees lies,” said Taleswapper. “Even when they aren’t there. Just as a hypocrite sees hypocrites whenever he runs across good people. Can’t stand to think that anyone might really be what you only pretend to be.”

“The dreamers always seem to think their dream is worth the price that other people will pay. They also delude themselves that they will control whatever evil they use to try to bring about their dream.”

“In a way, he lost some of himself, some of his knack, and therefore some of the choices he might have had in life. But in losing those, he gained so much more freedom, so much more power, that he was clear winner in the bargain.”

“It (i. e., advertising) was like horoscopes—enough blind stabs and some of them are bound to strike a target.”

“You think my apology means I'm weak. But it doesn't. It means I am trying to learn how to be strong.”

“How is clean, painless nonexistence any worse than clean, painless death?”

“If I wanted to doubt then I could doubt endlessly. But at some point a person has to stop questioning and act, and at that point you have to trust something to be true. You have to act as if something is true, and so you choose the thing you have the most reason to believe in, you have to live in the world that you have the most hope in.”

“Money only buys the illusion of power. Real power is in the force of will — will strong enough that others bend to it for its own sake, and follow it willingly. Power that is won through deception will evaporate under the hot light of truth.”

““I have no fear of war,” said Arthur Stuart. “That’s when kings get to show their mettle.”
“You’re thinking of chess,” said Margaret. “In war, everyone has their chance to bleed.””

“Religion isn't always pretty. Especially viewed from the outside, by an unbeliever.”

“What the White man had won with so much blood and dishonesty was not the living land of the Red man, but the corpse of that land. It was decay that the White man won. It would turn to dust in his hands, Alvin knew it.”

“It made me wonder if perhaps our ancestors' crimes were not in fact far more terrible than they claimed. After all, the only histories we possessed told their version of what happened, and in their accounts they were completely innocent.”

“I don't know you, ma'am, and apparently I'm expected to die for you.”

“Coincidence is just the word we use when we have not yet discovered the cause.”

“Having never been in control of his own life, his idea of freedom was simply to break free.”

“They are beautiful monsters… And when they live in a network of peace and hope, when they trust the world and their deepest hungers are fulfilled, then within that system, that delicate web, there is joy. That is what we live for, to bind the monsters together, to murder their fear and give birth to their beauty.”

“You never needed anybody.
If you had ever bothered to come to know me, you'd know that that is the exact opposite of the truth.
Well, well. So we part in utter ignorance of each other.”

“Here's my throat. I carry no weapon. You could have killed me at any time, even when I knew you were my enemy. Why did you need to deceive me into trusting you first? Were you afraid that death wouldn't bother me enough, unless I felt betrayed?”

“I think if you left grownups to do what they really actually wanted most in the world to do, every single one of them would lie down and take a nap for the rest of their life. I know this because that's what every grownup does as soon as they're alone.”

“Lolla-Wossiky is left like a White man then. Cut off from the land. Ground crunching underfoot. Branches snagging. Roots tripping. Animals running away.”

“Justice could be cruel, and crueler yet necessity, but mercy was the cruelest thing of all.”

“Lookit that,” he said. “A lawyer who knows how to do something useful. That’s a miracle.”

“You were born with compassion, only that also means that when people are cruel to you it cuts you deep. You won't understand that you have to walk right up to the ones who are being hateful and laugh in their faces and earn their respect. Instead you'll try to figure out what you did to make them mad at you.”

“The White man never guessed at what the Red man saw and heard and felt. The White man brought death and emptiness to this place. The White man cut down wise old trees with much to tell; young saplings with many lifetimes of life ahead; and the White man never asked, Will you be glad to make a lodgehouse for me and my tribe? Hack and cut and chop and burn, that was the White man’s way. Take from the forest, take from the land, take from the river, but put nothing back. The White man killed animals he didn’t need, animals that did him no harm; yet if a bear woke hungry in the winter and took so much as a single young pig, the White man hunted him down and killed him in revenge. He never felt the balance of the land at all.”

“Was it worth it? To lose part of who he had been in order to live free? Perhaps this new self was better than the old.”

“'A woman's wisdom is her gift to women,'" Peggy quoted. "'Her beauty is her gift to men. Her love is her gift to God.'”

“I've done my best, but the boy is unteachable. He doubts everything, and contests each point of theology as if it were required to meet the same tests of logic and consistency that prevail in the world of science.”
“In other words, he expects your doctrines to make sense.”
“He is unwilling to accept the idea that some things remain mysteries, comprehensible only to the mind of God. Ambiguity makes him saucy, and paradox causes open rebellion.”

“You are sure your enemy is stupid because he doesn't do things as you would do them. It will make you careless, and your enemy will surprise you.”