The Power That Preserves

Quotes

1. Do not be too quick to judge the makers of worlds. Will you ever write a story for which no character will have caused to reproach you?

   p. 473

2. 

   He smiled because he was alive.

   p. 480

3. 

   “I’ll tell you what it is. It’s a goddam miracle, that’s what it is.”

   “Come, now,” the older man murmured. “I don’t believe in miracles—neither do you.”

   p. 479

4. 

   Verily, wisdom is like hunger. Perhaps it is a very fine thing—but who would willingly partake of it?

   p. 394

5. 

   You did not cause his despair. Had you treated him with distrust, you would have achieved nothing but the confirmation of his distress. Distrust—vindicates itself.

   p. 321

6. 

   Then he grinned. “But it is said that hunger teaches many things. My friend, a wealth of wisdom awaits us on this journey.”

   p. 394

7. 

   I rest and rest, but I do not become young.

   p. 286

8. 

   He no longer accused himself; he knew then that no one could be blamed for being inadequate in the face of such unanswerable malevolence. Destruction was easier than preservation, and when destruction had risen high enough, mere men and women could not be condemned if they failed to throw back the tide.

   p. 229

9. 

   The bluff stone of the tower, with Revelstone rising behind it like the prow of a great ship, answered his gaze in granite permanence as if it were a prophecy by the old Giants—a cryptic perception that victory and defeat were human terms which had no meaning in the language of mountains.

   p. 344

10. 

    Retribution—ah, my friend, retribution is the sweetest of all sweet dark dreams.

    p. 392

11. 

    The answer to death was to make use of it rather than fall victim to it—master it by making it serve his goals, beliefs. This was not a good answer. But it was the only answer he had.

    p. 468

12. 

    Yet this withholding of knowledge ran against every grain of his character. He believed intensely that the refusal to share knowledge demeaned both the denier and the denied.

    p. 30

13. 

    It was gray cold and dead from horizon to horizon under the gray dead clouds—not the soft comfortable gray of twilit illusions, of unstark colors blurring like consolation or complacency into each other, but rather the gray of disconsolation and dismay, paradoxically dull and raw, numb and poignant, a gray like the ashen remains of color and sap and blood and bone. Gray wind drove gray cold over the gray frozen hills; gray snow gathered in this drifts under the lees of the gray terrain; gray ice underscored the black, brittle, leafless branches of the trees barely visible in the distance on his left, and stifled the gray, miserable current of the river almost out of sight on his right; gray numbness clutched at his flesh and soul.

    p. 270

14. 

    “Then why do you delay? Why do you fear?”

    Because I am mortal, weak. The way is only clear—not sure. In my time, I have been a seer and oracle. Now I—I desire a sign. I require to see.”

    p. 342

15. 

    The task was impossible, and mortal human beings accomplished nothing but their own destruction when they attempted the impossible.

    p. 297

16. 

    “Are you wise, Unbeliever?”

    “Who knows? If I am—wisdom is overrated.”

    p. 394

17. 

    “We will soon know.”

    “Yes, indeed,” Covenant muttered. “Only I hate surprises. You never know when one of them is going to ruin your life.”

    p. 438

18. 

    She said that it is the responsibility of the living to justify the sacrifices of the dead. Otherwise their deaths have no meaning.

    p. 42

19. 

    “Are you so ashamed of what you were?”

    Bannon cocked a white eyebrow at the question, as if it came close to the truth. “I am not shamed,” he said distinctly. “But I am saddened that so many centuries were required to teach us the limits of our worth. We went too far, in pride and folly. Mortal men should not give up wives and sleep and death for any service—less the face of failure become too abhorrent to be endured.”

    p. 387

20. 

    Abruptly Loerya joined the probing. “And if there is no Creator? Or if the creation is untended?”

    “Then who is there to reproach us? We provide the meaning of our own lives. If we serve the Land purely to the furthest limit of our abilities, what more can we ask of ourselves?”

    p. 48

21. 

    Power was dreadful and treacherous. When it was not great enough to accomplish its wielder’s desires, it turned against the hands which held it.

    p. 30

That’s all the quotes.

21 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more