Truth, like a diamond, has many facets.
– from The Palace of Illusions book by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Look at them, the bugs. Humans …
Look at them, the bugs. Humans have used everything in their power to extinguish them: every kind of poison, aerial sprays, introducing and cultivating their natural predators, searching for and destroying their eggs, using genetic modification to sterilize them, burning with fire, drowning with water. Every family has bug spray, every desk has a flyswatter under it … this long war has been going on for the entire history of human civilization. But the outcome is still in doubt. The bugs have not been eliminated. They still proudly live between the heavens and the earth, and their numbers have not diminished from the time before the appearance of the humans.
– from The Three-Body Problem book by Cixin Liu
Don’t underestimate the power of prayer …
Don’t underestimate the power of prayer! It might well prevail where muscles failed!
– from The Palace of Illusions book by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Love comes like lightning, and disappears …
Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way. If you’re lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you’ll spend your life yearning for a man you can’t have. I advise you to forget about love, princess. Pleasure is simpler, and duty more important. Learn to be satisfied with them.
– from The Palace of Illusions book by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Dear one, time will teach you …
Dear one, time will teach you what you refuse to learn from your well-wishers.
– from The Palace of Illusions book by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
In China, any idea that dared …
In China, any idea that dared to take flight would only crash back to the ground. The gravity of reality is too strong.
– from The Three-Body Problem book by Cixin Liu
The essential act of war is …
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed.
– from 1984 book by George Orwell
I believe that the invention of …
I believe that the invention of Bitcoin is the kind of thing that comes around once in a lifetime; perhaps once in many lifetimes.
– from Inventing Bitcoin book by Yan Pritzker
The great irony of investing is …
The great irony of investing is that the more you watch and fiddle with your holdings the less well you are likely to do. Fill your basket, add as much as you can along the way and ignore it the rest of the time. You’ll likely wake up rich.
– from The Simple Path to Wealth book by J. L. Collins
Poetry and prayer put ideas in …
Poetry and prayer put ideas in people’s heads that got them killed, distracting them from the ruthless mechanism of the world.
– from The Underground Railroad book by Colson Whitehead