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21 " We're living in momentous times, Garion. The events of a thousand years and more have all focused on these very days. The world, I'm told, is like that. Centuries pass when nothing happens, and then in a few short years events of such tremendous importance take place that the world is never the same again." I think that if I had my choice, I'd prefer one of those quiet centuries," Garion said glumly. Oh, no," Silk said, his lips drawing back in a ferretlike grin. " Now's the time to be alive - to see it all happen, to be a part of it. That makes the blood race, and each breath is an adventure. "
22 " The President called it the “Epitome of the American dream.” Daddy called it the “unholy alliance of business and government.” But all it really was, was America giving up. Bailing out in order to join the Financial Resource Exchange. A multinational alliance focused on one thing: profit. Fund global medical care to monopolize vaccines. Back unified currency to collect planet-wide interest. And provide the resources needed for a select group of scientists and military personnel to embark on the first trip across the universe in a quest to find more natural resources—more profit. The answer to my parents’ dreams. And my worst nightmare. And I know something about nightmares, seeing as how I’ve been sleeping longer than I’ve been alive. I hope. What if this is just a part of a long dream dreamt in the short time between when Ed locked the cryo door and Hassan pushed the button to freeze me? What if? It’s a strange sort of sleep, this. Never really waking up, but becoming aware of consciousness inside a too-still body. The dreams weave in and out of memories. The only thing keeping the nightmares from engulfing me is the hope that there couldn’t possibly be a hundred more years before I wake up. Not a hundred years. Not three hundred. Not three hundred and one. Please, God, no. Sometimes it feels like a thousand years have passed; sometimes it feels as if I’ve only been sleeping a few moments. I feel most like I’m in that weird state of half-asleep, half-awake I get when I’ve tried to sleep past noon, when I know I should get up, but my mind starts wandering and I’m sure I can never get back to sleep. Even if I do slip back into a dream for a few moments, I’m mostly just awake with my eyes shut. Yeah. Cryo sleep is like that. Sometimes I think there’s something wrong. I shouldn’t be so aware. But then I realize I’m only aware for a moment, and then, as I’m realizing it, I slip into another dream. Mostly, I dream of Earth. I think that’s because I didn’t want to leave it. A field of flowers; smells of dirt and rain. A breeze ... But not really a breeze, a memory of a breeze, a memory made into a dream that tries to drown out my frozen mind. Earth. I hold on to my thoughts of Earth. I don’t like the dreamtime. The dreamtime is too much like dying. They are dreams, but I’m too out of control, I lose myself in them, and I’ve already lost too much to let them take over. I push the dream-memory down. That happened centuries ago, and it’s too late for regrets now. Because all my parents ever wanted was to be a part of the first manned interstellar exploratory mission, and all I ever wanted was to be with them. And I guess it doesn’t matter that I had a life on Earth, and that I loved Earth, and that by now, my friends have all lived and gotten old and died, and I’ve just been lying here in frozen sleep. "
― Beth Revis , Across the Universe (Across the Universe, #1)
23 " One destructive mind-set that must be altered in our society is the thought that work is a curse. Some people advocate that if you are truly blessed you don’t need to work hard. Because as they say “the race is not to the swift”, I even had statements like “a day of favour is better than a thousand years of labour”. To make things worse, this type of teachings are actually coming from our pulpits. We call ourselves Protestants, but we have totally departed from the teachings of the early Protestants. Martin Luther, John Wesley and John Calvin would turn in their graves, if they hear the kind of teachings we are now feeding the people of God with. "
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24 " What did it matter that the Light had been taken away from him? What did it matter that Arienne was gone? If it took a thousand years to find her...if he had to cross boiling seas or raging skies...if it cost him his eyes or his tongue, his hands or his feet, his very soul... He would relinquish it all, if it meant he could keep that promise he'd made so long ago. He had nothing else. Without this, he knew, he would simply wither away. "
25 " Remembering that only a few years ago men, women, and even children, were imprisoned, tortured and burned, for having expressed in an exceedingly mild and gentle way, the ideas entertained by me, I congratulate myself that calumny is now the pulpit's last resort. The old instruments of torture are kept only to gratify curiosity; the chains are rusting away, and the demolition of time has allowed even the dungeons of the Inquisition to be visited by light. The church, impotent and malicious, regrets, not the abuse, but the loss of her power, and seeks to hold by falsehood what she gained by cruelty and force, by fire and fear. Christianity cannot live in peace with any other form of faith. If that religion be true, there is but one savior, one inspired book, and but one little narrow grass-grown path that leads to heaven. Such a religion is necessarily uncompromising, unreasoning, aggressive and insolent. Christianity has held all other creeds and forms in infinite contempt, divided the world into enemies and friends, and verified the awful declaration of its founder—a declaration that wet with blood the sword he came to bring, and made the horizon of a thousand years lurid with the fagots' flames. "
― Robert G. Ingersoll , Some Mistakes of Moses
26 " Darling, no one would ever dream of performing an operation on a child without testing it first. And no one in a thousand years would take a child's daemon away altogether! All that happens is a little cut, and then everything's peaceful. Forever! You see, your daemon's a wonderful friend and com panion when you're young, but at the age we call puberty, the age you're coming to very soon, darling, daemons bring all sort of troublesome thoughts and feelings, and that's what lets Dust in. A quick little operation before that, and you're never troubled again. And your daemon stays with you, only...just not connected. Like a... like a wonderful pet, if you like. The best pet in the world!Wouldn't you like that? (Marisa Coulter) "
― Philip Pullman , The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)
27 " Looking for a thousand years is worth it, if in the end you find what you need. "
― Scott Westerfeld , Afterworlds (Afterworlds #1)
28 " His mind was betraying him. Phantoms not heard from in a thousand years rousing slowly from their sleep. "
― Cormac McCarthy , The Road
29 " So - people a thousand years from now...This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying. "
― Thornton Wilder
30 " Exoneration of Jesus Christ If Christ was in fact God, he knew all the future.Before Him like a panorama moved the history yet to be. He knew how his words would be interpreted.He knew what crimes, what horrors, what infamies, would be committed in his name. He knew that the hungry flames of persecution would climb around the limbs of countless martyrs. He knew that thousands and thousands of brave men and women would languish in dungeons in darkness, filled with pain.He knew that his church would invent and use instruments of torture; that his followers would appeal to whip and fagot, to chain and rack. He saw the horizon of the future lurid with the flames of the auto da fe.He knew what creeds would spring like poisonous fungi from every text. He saw the ignorant sects waging war against each other.He saw thousands of men, under the orders of priests, building prisons for their fellow-men. He saw thousands of scaffolds dripping with the best and bravest blood. He saw his followers using the instruments of pain. He heard the groans—saw the faces white with agony.He heard the shrieks and sobs and cries of all the moaning, martyred multitudes. He knew that commentaries would be written on his words with swords, to be read by the light of fagots. He knew that the Inquisition would be born of the teachings attributed to him. He saw the interpolations and falsehoods that hypocrisy would write and tell. He saw all wars that would be waged, and-he knew that above these fields of death, these dungeons, these rackings, these burnings, these executions, for a thousand years would float the dripping banner of the cross.He knew that hypocrisy would be robed and crowned—that cruelty and credulity would rule the world; knew that liberty would perish from the earth; knew that popes and kings in his name would enslave the souls and bodies of men; knew that they would persecute and destroy the discoverers, thinkers and inventors; knew that his church would extinguish reason’s holy light and leave the world without a star.He saw his disciples extinguishing the eyes of men, flaying them alive, cutting out their tongues, searching for all the nerves of pain.He knew that in his name his followers would trade in human flesh; that cradles would be robbed and women’s breasts unbabed for gold.And yet he died with voiceless lips.Why did he fail to speak? Why did he not tell his disciples, and through them the world: “You shall not burn, imprison and torture in my name. You shall not persecute your fellow-men.”Why did he not plainly say: “I am the Son of God,” or, “I am God”? Why did he not explain the Trinity? Why did he not tell the mode of baptism that was pleasing to him? Why did he not write a creed? Why did he not break the chains of slaves? Why did he not say that the Old Testament was or was not the inspired word of God? Why did he not write the New Testament himself?Why did he leave his words to ignorance, hypocrisy and chance? Why did he not say something positive, definite and satisfactory about another world? Why did he not turn the tear-stained hope of heaven into the glad knowledge of another life? Why did he not tell us something of the rights of man, of the liberty of hand and brain?Why did he go dumbly to his death, leaving the world to misery and to doubt?I will tell you why. He was a man, and did not know. "
― Robert G. Ingersoll
31 " Walking alone is not difficult but when we have walked a mile worth a thousand years with someone then coming back alone is what is difficult. "
― Faraaz Kazi , Truly, Madly, Deeply
32 " So it's back once more, back up the slope.Why do they always ruin my ropewith their cuts?I felt so ready the other day,Had a real foretaste of eternityIn my guts.Spoonfeeding me yet another sipfrom life's cup.I don't want it, won't take any more of it.Let me throw up.Life is medium rare and good, I see,And the world full of soup and bread,But it won't pass into the blood for me,Just goes to my head.It makes me ill, though others it feeds;Do see that I must deny it!For a thousand years from now at leastI'm keeping a diet. "
― Rainer Maria Rilke , The Best of Rilke: 72 Form-true Verse Translations with Facing Originals, Commentary and Compact Biography
33 " After a thousand years pass, it builds its own funeral pyre, lining it with cinnamon, myrrh and cassia. Climbing to a rest on the very top, it examines the world all throughout the night with the ability to see true good and evil. When the sun rises the next morning, with great sorrow for all that it sees, it sings a haunting song. As it sings, the heat of the sun ignites the expensive spices and the Phoenix dies in the flames.But the Phoenix is not remarkable for its feathers or flames. It is most revered for its ability to climb from its own funeral pyre, from the very ashes of its old charred body, as a brand new life ready to live again once more. Life after life, it goes through this cycle. It absorbs human sorrow, only to rise from death to do it all again. It never wearies, it never tires. It never questions its fate. Some say that the Phoenix is real, that it exists somewhere out there in the mountains of Arabia, elusive and mysterious. Others say that the Phoenix is only a wish made by desperate humans to believe in the continuance of life.But I know a secret.We are the Phoenix. "
― Courtney Cole , Every Last Kiss (The Bloodstone Saga, #1)
34 " You could have fucked me ’til your uncut, overexposed on the blogs, ‘too ginormous for my snatch’ pecker fell off. And I’d still no way never ever in a thousand years sell, loan, sample you my Easton. And to answer your question, I run my company with my pussy, and twenty-four other pussy-sporting employees. Easton girls do not allow dickheads or cocks in our fashion world. Period. "
― Avery Aster , Undressed (The Manhattanites, #2)
35 " I’ve lived what feels like a thousand years to feel your kiss but my little mate, I’m in charge.” He said huskily, an air of authority lacing his words. "
36 " Therein lies the new hope—Justice, after eighteen hundred years of impotent Charity. Ah! in a thousand years from now, when Catholicism will be naught but a very ancient superstition of the past, how amazed men will be to think that their ancestors were able to endure that religion of torture and nihility! "
― Émile Zola , Paris (Three Cities Trilogy, #3)
37 " Curt, my husband, is a writer, and he’ll never write again. That’s our funeral, as they say down south. Now in your case, my pet, you’re married to a phenomenon of our own special epoch, a man who couldn’t in a thousand years be a writer in the only meaning of the term, but who can and probably will write a book. "
― James Purdy , Cabot Wright Begins
38 " The Islamic faith and ideology is at another pivotal moment in its history. Having survived for a thousand years or more after the Western Crusades it has been hauled back into the fire by some of its frustrated followers. Followers who have literally re interpreted or re translated the many open verses and chapters of the holy Qu’ran. These followers of the extreme Islamic beliefs are hankering to take our social order back and return it to the time of the prophet (mpbuh). The very turbulent dark and bloody days of religion and cults when ideologies were spread by the sword. "
39 " A Tibetan proverb says that it is better to live for one day as a tiger than to live for a thousand years as a sheep. Well, I think the opposite, because the most important thing is to exist! Living sheep is superior to dead tiger! "
40 " In a thousand years or ten thousand, no one would remember my nation. It, too, would share in oblivion and prove to not matter, to never have mattered. The same for my species, and the earth, the universe, and God. When the last star winks out, none of it will have mattered - and it ten billion years, I will still be nothing - and equal to God. That was the first stage in my enlightenment: to understand that nothing matters. Hence, everything is equal. "
― Rory Miller
