Home > Topic > the long years
1 " In the life of everyone there is a limited number of experiences which are not written upon the memory, but stamped there with a die; and in the long years after, they can be called up in detail, and every emotion that was stirred by them can be lived through anew; these are the tragedies of life. "
― James Weldon Johnson , The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man
2 " Maybe sheetrocking wasn't one of Sully's favorite jobs, but like most physical labor, there was a rhythm to it that you could find if you cared to look, and once you found this rhythm it'd get you through a morning. Rhythm was what Sully had counted on over the long years - that and the wisdom to understand that no job, no matter how thankless or stupid or backbreaking, could not be gotten through. The clock moved if you let it. "
― Richard Russo , Nobody's Fool (Sully #1)
3 " In the long years to come, not only will the people of this island but of the world, wherever the bird of freedom chirps in human hearts, look back to what we've done, and they will say 'do not despair, do not yield...march straightforward. "
― Winston S. Churchill
4 " For men, the softer emotions are always intertwined with power and pride. That was why Karna waited for me to plead with him though he could have stopped my suffering with a single world. That was why he turned on me when I refused to ask for his pity. That was why he incited Dussasan to an action that was against the code of honor by which he lived his life. He knew he would regret it—in his fierce smile there had already been a glint of pain.But was a woman's heart any purer, in the end?That was the final truth I learned. All this time I'd thought myself better than my father, better than all those men who inflicted harm on a thousand innocents in order to punish the one man who had wronged them. I'd thought myself above the cravings that drove him. But I, too, was tainted with them, vengeance encoded into my blood. When the moment came I couldn't resist it, no more than a dog can resist chewing a bone that, splintering, makes his mouth bleed.Already I was storing these lessons inside me. I would use them over the long years of exile to gain what I wanted, no matter what its price.But Krishna, the slippery one, the one who had offered me a different solace, Krishna with his disappointed eyes—what was the lesson he'd tried to teach? "
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , The Palace of Illusions
5 " Dispassionately, reasonably, he contemplated the failutre that his life must appear to be. He had wanted friendship and the closeness of friendship that might hold him in the race of mankind; he had had two friends, one of whom had died senselessly before he was known, the other of whom had now withdrawn so distantly into the ranks of the living that... He had wanted the singleness and the still connective passion of marriage; he had had that, too, and he had not known what to do with it, and it had died. He had wanted love; and he had had love, and had relinquished it, had let it go into the chaos of potentiality. Katherine, he thought. " Katherine." And he had wanted to be a teacher, and he had become one; yet he knew, he had always known, that for most of his life he had been an indifferent one. He had dreamed of a kind of integrity, of a kind of purity that was entire; he had found compromise and the assaulting diversion of triviality. He had conceived wisdom, and at the end of the long years he had found ignorance. And what else? he thought. What else? What did you expect? he asked himself. "
6 " Books; I repeat, for they've not only been a solace during the long years but also provided the keys to understanding other people's ideas and achievements, their hopes and fears, quirks and foibles, their dreams.....their demons "
― Eliza Granville , Gretel and the Dark
7 " Listen my hatchling, for now you shall hear Of the only seven slayers a dragon must fear. First beware Pride, lest belief in one’s might Has you discount the foeman who is braving your sight.Never Envy other dragons their wealth, power, or home For dark plots and plans will bring death to your own. Your Wrath shouldn’t win, when spears strike your scale Anger kills cunning, which you will need to prevail. A dragon must rest, but Sloth you should dread Else long years of napping let assassins to your bed. ‘Greed is good,’ or so foolish dragons will say Until piles of treasure bring killing thieves where they lay. Hungry is your body, and at times you must feed But Gluttony makes fat dragons, who can’t fly at their need. A hot Lust for glory, gems, gold, or mates Leads reckless young drakes to the blackest of fates. So take heed of this wisdom, precious hatchling of mine, And the long years of dragonhood are sure to be thine. "
― E.E. Knight , Dragon Champion (Age of Fire #1)
