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Bearers of the Black Staff

Terry Brooks

Top 10 Best Quotes

“We are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, and no amount of education gleaned from our propensity for self-destruction and misguided thinking ever teaches us anything. Not anything that we remember for more than a generation or two.I think maybe we learn a few things each time that we don't forget. A few things that stick with us. It's just hard to pass those things on to those who come after us because if they didn't live through it, they don't view it the same way we do. If you don't experience something firsthand, it's a lot harder to accept.

“And yet it had come to this: a cult that followed a dogmatic hard line of exclusion and repression, believed its teachings alone were the way that others must follow, and claimed special knowledge of something that had happened more than five centuries ago. It did nothing to soften its rigid stance, nothing to heal wounds that it had helped to create by deliberately shunning people of other Races, and nothing to explore the possibility of other beliefs. It held its ground even in the face of hard evidence that perhaps it had misjudged and refused to consider that it was courting a danger that might destroy everyone. p96”

“She had grown to accept unpleasantness as a part of life rather than to struggle futilely against truths that could not be changed.”

“It is in the nature of things to want to believe that what's familiar and comfortable will last forever.”

“Centuries of enlightenment and progress vanished virtually overnight because Men couldn’t find a way to use it wisely and purposefully.”

“This isn’t something I had planned to talk about so soon,” her grandmother said as they entered the gardens. “I wanted to wait awhile longer to give you a chance to demonstrate that you were ready, that you had listened to what I told you about growing up and making mature decisions. I wanted you to season a little more. But we don’t always get what we want in this life. In fact, we don’t get what we want most of the time. We get compromises and settlements, half measures and tamped-down dreams. We get half a loaf baked, half a glass filled. That’s what we have here.” Phryne nodded, having no idea what she was talking about. “That might be so, but we don’t have to like it.” “We shouldn’t have to accept it, either. Mostly, we don’t. We understand the odds are against us, but we still strive for something more. We make our best effort each time out because now and then we get exactly what we want.”

“You are a girl becoming a woman, but you are not there yet. You will get there more quickly and smoothly if you question your choices before acting on them.”

“When he woke, the sun was cresting the horizon of jagged mountain peaks in a wash of crimson light and he was bathed in his own sweat.”

“What on the surface seems obvious and clear is mired in chains of details that are interlinked and sometimes unbreakable.”

“We’re all stuck in this world, and none of us made it the way it is. We don’t like much about it, and I think if you want to live in it with some sense of responsibility, you have to find ways to keep it this side of becoming too insane.”

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Book Keywords:

racism, girl, history-wisdom-trains, intolerance, prejudice, woman

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