Jo Walton

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.

The sun is but a morning star.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

God’s first creature, which was light.

I look up at the universe and ask, ‘What are you trying to teach me here?’ I know I won’t hear a reply, but asking the question, makes me begin looking for the answer.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake . . . by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man.