Howthorne
- Rappaccini's Daughter
Soon there emerged from under a sculptured portal the figure of a young girl, arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of the flowers, beautiful as the day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid that one shade more would have been too much. She looked redundant with life, health, and energy; all of which attributes were bound down and compressed, as it were, and girdled tensely, in their luxuriance, by her virgin zone. Yet, Giovani's fancy must have grown morbid.
Orson Scott Card
- Children of the Mind
"Can't shut up to save your own life?" "I'm trying to solve the problem of communicating with an alien species, and you're busy worrying about whether I'm nice to you." "But Quara," said Jane, "hasn't it ever occurred to you that once they get to know you, even the aliens will wish you had never learned their language?" "I'm certainly wishing you had never learned mine,"
Anonymous
Life is complicated. It's not that you are bad and everyone else is good, nor that you are good and everyone else is bad. Good and bad are not incommensurable. We all know good and bad step on each other feet like there is no tomorrow.
Orson Scott Card
- Children of the Mind
Even though I know the necessity of helping Ender let go of this body by making this an unbearable place for him to stay, it doesn't change the fact that I'll remember saying it, I'll remember the way she looks now, weeping with despair and pain. How can I live with that? I thought I was deformed before. All I had wrong with me then was brain damage. But now - I couldn't have said any of these things to her if I hadn't thought them. There's the rub.
Orson Scott Card
- Children of the Mind
Almost he shouted at her, No, Val, it's you I love, it's you I want! It's you I longed for all my life and Ender is a good man because all this nonsense about you being a pretense is impossible. Ender didn't create you consciously, the way hypocrites create their facade. You grew out of him. The virtues were there, are there, and you are the natural home for them. I already loved and admired Ender, but not until I met you did I know how beautiful he was inside.
Orson Scott Card
- Children of the Mind
"The kid was a prick but he didn't deserve to die. Ender was a killer from the start. That's the reason he needs Peter. So he can take the ugly ruthless killer side of himself and put it all on Peter. And he can look at perfect you and say, 'See, that beautiful thing was inside me.' And we all play along. But you're not beautiful, Val. You're the pathetic apologia of a man whose whole life is a lie.".
Orson Scott Card
- Children of the Mind
You're the childhood innocence he thinks he lost, but here is the truth about that: before they ever took him away from his parents, before he ever went up to that Battle School in the sky, before they made a perfect killing machine of him, he was already the brutal, ruthless killer that he always feared he was. It's one of the things that even Ender pretended it wasn't so: He killed a boy before he ever became a soldier.
Annonymous
- Facebook comment
There is one thing worse than slavery: making freedom worthless. Nonetheless, that freedom is worthless, can only be an illusion. Freedom is everything. It is ironical that even when the pay is not enough to fill your tummy, people still do not choose to do work that they love.
Orson Scott Card
- Children of the Mind
I don't want to understand you," said Peter. "I want to accomplish my task by exploiting this brilliant intelligence you're supposed to have - even if you believe that people who squat are somehow 'closer to the earth' than people who remain upright." "I was talking about the person closest to you: Ender," she said. "He long since got over hating you." "Yeah, yeah, he wrote The Hegemon." "That's right," said Mu. "He created you because he desperately needed someone to hate him."
Orson Scott Card
- Children of the Mind
"Somebody's heart says, 'I am the wind from the cold snow of the mountain, and you are the tiger whose roar will freeze in your own ears before you tremble and die in the iron knife of my winter eyes'?" "It sounds like you," said Mu. "Bluster and brag." "I am the round eyed sweating man who stinks like the corpse of a leaking skunk, and you are the flower who will wilt unless I take an immediate shower with lye and ammonia." "Keep your eyes closed when you do," said Mu. "That stuff burns."
Orson Scott Card
- Children of the Mind
I'm joining the Filhos with you. They're a married order, and we're a married couple. Without me you can't join, and you need to join. With me you can. What could be simpler?" "Simpler?" She shook her head. "You don't believe in God, how's that for starters?" "I certainly do too believe in God,"said Ender annoyed. "Oh, you're willing to concede God's existence, but that's not what I meant. I mean believe in him the way a mother means it when she says to her son, I believe in you. ...
Bruce Lee
- 1971 "Black Belt" magazine essay
A teacher, a really good sensei, is never a giver of "truth"; he is a guide, a pointer to the truth that the student must discover for himself. A good teacher, therefore, studies each student individually and encourages the student to explore himself, both internally and externally, until, ultimately, the student is integrated with his being.
Orson Scott Card
- Children of the Mind
At the last moment she reached out and gathered a bee from a blossom into her hand, into her fist, but then quickly, before it could sting her, she lobbed it into Peter's face. Flustered, surprised, he batted away the infuriated bee, ducked under it, dodged, and finally ran a few steps before it lost track of him and buzzed its way out among the flowers again. Only then could he turn furiously to face her. "What was that for!" She giggled at him - she couldn't help it. He had looked funny.
