“True courage, in the face of almost certain death, is the rarest quality on earth.”
Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden
Source: Black Blood
Source: The Mad Ship
“True courage, in the face of almost certain death, is the rarest quality on earth.”
Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden
Source: Black Blood
Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature
Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 1
Context: The best thing to do will be to choose the path to Galta, traverse it again (invent it as I traverse it), and without realizing it, almost imperceptibly, go to the end — without being concerned about what “going to the end” means or what I meant when I wrote that phrase. At the very beginning of the journey, already far off the main highway, as I walked along the path that leads to Galta, past the little grove of banyan trees and the pools of foul stagnant water, through the Gateway fallen into ruins and into the main courtyard bordered by dilapidated houses, I also had no idea where I was going, and was not concerned about it. I wasn’t asking myself questions: I was walking, merely walking, with no fixed itinerary in mind. I was simply setting forth to meet … what? I didn’t know at the time, and I still don’t know. Perhaps that is why I wrote “going to the end”: in order to find out, in order to discover what there is after the end. A verbal trap; after the end there is nothing, since if there were something, the end would not be the end. Nonetheless, we are always setting forth to meet … even though we know that there is nothing, or no one, awaiting us. We go along, without a fixed itinerary, yet at the same time with an end (what end?) in mind, and with the aim of reaching the end. A search for the end, a dread of the end: the obverse and the reverse of the same act. Without this end that constantly eludes us we would not journey forth, nor would there be any paths. But the end is the refutation and the condemnation of the path: at the end the path dissolves, the meeting fades away to nothingness. And the end — it too fades away to nothingness.
Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet
Quoting her mother's statement after her son's birth, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
W. Clement Stone (1902–2002) American New Thought author
As quoted in Teen Ink : What Matters (2003) by Stephanie H. Meyer, John Meyer, and Peggy Veljkovic, p. 309
Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet
Se daba a todos sin seguir a nadie. Y en aquel mundo, donde casi todos siguen a todos sin darse a nadie.
Voces (1943)
Alexander Ovechkin (1985) Russian ice hockey player
Kevin McGran (October 28, 2006) "'Having the time of my life' - Capitals' Alexander Ovechkin says he loves to deliver hits and isn't averse to taking a few, either Rangers' Lundqvist's experiencing problems keeping the puck out this season, by Kevin McGran", The Toronto Star, p. E05.
Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)
Space: What love's got to do with it - The Space Review (2004)
Elaine Paige (1948) English singer and actress
Regarding Paige's battle with cancer; as quoted in "Elaine's close curtain call" by Rebecca Hardy in The Daily Mail (8 May 2004)