Terry Goodkind

“«"The trickster", the Mother Confessor said. "I told you that was our name for him"»”

“If our love's tragedy, why are you my remedy? If our love's insanity, why are you my clarity?”

“Evil is not one large entity, but a collection of countless, small depravities brought up from the muck by petty men. Many have traded the enrichment of vision for a gray fog of mediocrity--the fertile inspiration of striving and growth, for mindless stagnation and slow decay--the brave new ground of the attempt, for the timid quagmire of apathy. Many of you have traded freedom not even for a bowl of soup, but worse, for the spoken empty feelings of others who say that you deserve to have a full bowl of soup provided by someone else. Happiness, joy, accomplishment, achievement . . . are not finite commodities, to be divided up. Is a child’s laughter to be divided and allotted? No! Simply make more laughter! Every person’s life is theirs by right. An individual’s life can and must belong only to himself, not to any society or community, or he is then but a slave. No one can deny another person their right to their life, nor seize by force what is produced by someone else, because that is stealing their means to sustain their life. It is treason against mankind to hold a knife to a man’s throat and dictate how he must live his life. No society can be more important than the individuals who compose it, or else you ascribe supreme importance, not to man, but to any notion that strikes the fancy of the society, at a never-ending cost of lives. Reason and reality are the only means to just laws; mindless wishes, if given sovereignty, become deadly masters. Surrendering reason to faith in unreasonable men sanctions their use of force to enslave you--to murder you. You have the power to decide how you will live your life. Those mean, unreasonable little men are but cockroaches, if you say they are. They have no power to control you but that which you grant them!”

“Freedom requires effort if it is to be won and vigilance if it is to be maintained. People just don't value freedom until it is taken away.”

“Enemies,' the wizard said, 'are the price of honour.”

“Why people wanted to dance whenever it got dark was beyond him. Somehow, the two seemed to go together, like bees and flowers, or flies and dung. Darkness and dancing.”

“Sometimes that's all life is... One desperate act after another.”

“Dance with me, Death, I am ready.”

“Keep your vision all-inclusive, never allowing it to lock on any one thing...look everywhere at once, see nothing to the exclusion of all else---don't allow the enemy to direct your vision, or you will see what he wishes you to see. He will then come at you as you become bewildered, looking for his attack, and you will lose.
Instead, your vision must open to all there is, never settling, even when cutting. Know your enemy's moves by instinct, not waiting to see them. To dance with death meant to know the enemy's sword and its speed without waiting to see it. Dancing with death meant being one with the enemy, without looking fixedly, so that you could kill him. Dancing with death meant being committed to killing, committed with your heart and soul.”

“The training of a Mord-Sith takes years - to learn to handle the pain. I guess it's also why only women are Mord-Sith, men are too weak.”

“There is nothing that exists that has only one side. Even a piece of paper, thin as it is, has two sides.”

“I wish people had half the honor of dragons.”

“Only you can achieve self-worth for yourself. Any group offering it to you, or demanding it of you, comes bearing chains of slavery.”

“I'm surprised you don't know more about magic, Sister Verna. There is a word that is magic. It can accomplish more than you might think. Maybe you have heard it before. It is the word 'please.”

“But in the end, we can’t live our lives by ‘what if’ and ‘if only.’ We can only do the best we can to the best of our ability based on what we know. That’s why the truth is so important.”

“It struck Magda as ironic that those who professed to want peace the most were quickest to use bloodshed to try to get their way.”

“Sometimes, it is necessary to step beyond what you have known and to reach for something more.”

“If you regain your senses, come see me, I will teach you how.” - Cara”

“Richard will have my hand, but you should know as well as anyone that he will not be eating out of it –and I wouldn’t want him to.” - Kahlan”

“He is teaching them to eat those seeds,” she said through clenched teeth, “out of Raina and Berdine’s hands. The two of them were giggling.” – Cara”

“He is taming chipmunks.” – Cara”

“You mean that it’s not only what he does that makes him dangerous, but also what he feels justified in doing?”

“The foundations of some formerly strong lands became so riddled with termites of diminished purpose, so decayed with the decadence of smug moderation, and so emaciated with the vacillating aims of appears, that even when they saw the enemy coming and did resist, they were easily toppled when the Imperial Order finally pushed.”

“The ruby is meant to represent a drop of blood. It is the symbolic representation of the way of the primary edict. It means only one thing and everything. Cut. Once committed to the fight, cut. Everything else is secondary. Cut. That is your duty, your purpose, your hunger. There is no rule more important, no commitment that overrides that one. Cut. The lines are a portrayal of the dance. Cut from the void, not from bewilderment. Cut the enemy as quickly and directly as possible. Cut with certainty. Cut decisively, resolutely. Cut into his strength. Flow through the gap in his guard. Cut him. Cut him down utterly. Don’t allow him a breath. Crush him. Cut him without mercy to the depths of his spirit. It’s the balance of life: death. It is the dance with death.”

“Cut the attacker down, to cut them down to their very soul”

“Richard rubbed his temples. He had a headache from lack of sleep. "Don't you understand? This isn't about conquering lands and taking things from others; this is about fighting oppression."The general rested a boot on the gilded rung of a chair and hooked a thumb behind his wide belt. "I don't see much difference. From my experience, the Master Rahl always thinks he knows best, and always wants to rule the world. You are your father's son. War is war. Reasons make no difference to us; we fight because we are told to, same as those on the other side. Reasons mean little to a man swinging his sword, trying to keep his head.”

“Reasons are the spoils of victory. When you've destroyed the enemy, then your leaders write down the reasons in books, and give moving speeches about them. If you've done your job, then there aren't any of the enemy left to dispute your leader's reasons. At least not until the next war.”

“He was the monster. That was what Kahlan saw. And she had sent him away in a collar to be tortured. Because he was a monster that needed to be collared, a beast.”

“Talga Vassternich!”

“Never let a beautiful woman pick your path for you when there is a man in her line of sight”

“You have one Mord-Sith and one Mother Confessor, here, both in very bad moods. I would suggest you not give us an excuse to lose our temper, or we may never find it again in your lifetime.”

“This was life as it should be lived—proud, reasoned, and a slave to no other man.”

“Laugh all you want. I know my own worth and don't need to prove it to someone who doesn't know theirs.”

“That's why your lot in life isn't fate. I don't have any say in much of my life, but I make whatever choices I can make in my own rational best interest. It's my choice to fix those stairs and make the place I live a little better instead of whining and waiting and hoping for someone else to do something for me. I have pride that I know how to do that for myself.”

“If you care about yourself, you should care about learning - even learning simple things. You come to have pride in yourself only by accomplishing things, even from fixing some old stairs...Others can't grant you self-respect, even others who care about you. You have to earn self-respect yourself.”

“There would be nothing I could do to you that would harm you more than what you're already doing to harm yourself...You are never going to amount to anything. You will always be the worthless muck people scrape from their shoes. You only get one life and you are wasting yours. That's a terrible shame. I doubt you will ever know what it is to be truly happy, to achieve anything of worth, to have genuine pride in yourself. You bring it all on yourself, and I could do no worse to you.”

“Standing for truth is everything. Truth is power. Don't ever forget that.”

“We can't live our lives according to what might have been. We have to live by what is.”

“Sometimes it's more important to seize the chance and do what you can even knowing that it won't likely account for everything, that it is to do nothing.”

“Everyone makes mistakes. How a person deals with their mistakes is a mark of their character.”

“You can't love anyone or anything until you love your own existence first. Love can only grow out of a respect for your own life.”

“The only sovereign we could allow to rule us is reason.”

“When yo hold your nose so high in the air, you can't see where you are going.”

“Knowledge comes as it will. Life's lessons come at the most surprising times.”

“No amount of telling is worth doing it once.”

“Everyone has an effect on others. Some people inspire others to do great things. Some take people into crime with them. Those with the gift affect those around them even more.”

“When the whole world is crazy, it doesn't pay to be sane.”

“If you want to be a slave in life, then continue going around asking others to do for you. They will oblige, but you will find the price is your choices, your freedom, your life itself. They will do for you, and as a result you will be in bondage to them forever, having given your identity away for a paltry price. Then, and only then, you will be a nobody, a slave, because you yourself and nobody else made it so.”

“There were those who loved liberty, who cried out to live their own lives, to strive, to rise above, to achieve, and those bent on the mindless equality of stagnation brought about through the enforcement of an artificial, arbitrary, gray uniformity--those who wanted to transcend through their own effort, and those who wanted others to think for them and were willing to pay the ultimate price.”

“Honor is honesty to what is, not blind duty to what you wish to be.”