Gene Wolfe

If a lie becomes truth in the mouth of the last man alive, is it still a lie, or the genesis of a new world?

Imagine a man who remembers tomorrow but forgets today; he walks backward into prophecy and forward into amnesia. Is he wise, or merely lost in a direction none of us can follow?

Some wield knowledge as a cudgel, breaking others to prove they are whole. Some hoard it like gold, burying it deep lest another find its shine. But a few - ah, the rare few - give it as one gives love: freely, without measure, to any with hands open to receive.

The weak often wear strength like a borrowed cloak - ill-fitting, threadbare, and always slipping when the wind of truth begins to blow.

When a man knows where his feet stand, the shifting ground becomes a dance, not a danger.

Blood binds less than love, yet love, once kindled in the hearth of family, burns longer than stars and brighter than memory.

To pray to god is to confess, not to it, but to yourself - hoping, perhaps, that silence might echo back a shape of your soul you dared not see.

Resistance is the dream of the outnumbered, the whisper of steel in the dark. It is neither victory nor defeat, but the refusal to vanish.

Love is the silent alchemy that turns mere moments into eternity.

The brave are not those without fear, but those who carry it like a blade and still choose to walk into the dark.

Chance is the coin the universe flips—only fools think they see the hand that throws it.

The sun is kind today, spilling gold upon the earth. Time drifts like a lazy river, and for once, no hand hurries the current.

Men call it luck when the pattern is too vast for them to see. A coin spun in the air does not change its nature because it lands heads or tails, nor does a man because fortune favors or forsakes him. He was always what he was—only now, the world takes notice.

They would have men be machines, obedient and unerring, or angels, gentle and pure. But men are neither. They err, they hunger, they dream. And so the world, which loves order more than truth, calls them broken, when they are only alive.

Learning is the art of seeing what is hidden in plain sight, of unweaving the world’s veil thread by thread—until, at last, one finds it was never there at all.

Love is the mystery that, once known, remakes the knower.

Cruelty is the luxury of the weak, who, fearing their own smallness, seek to make others smaller still. The truly strong have no need to wound, for they know that power is not measured in the suffering of those beneath them.

The man who claims no choice deceives himself; even in chains, he selects which foot moves first.

To own a thing is to be owned by it in turn, for possession weaves unseen chains. The wise do not clutch, but steward; they hold with open hands, knowing that all things pass, and only the weight of duty remains.

The world molds men like clay, pressing them into shapes it prefers. But the soul, if it is to be worth having, must fire itself in its own kiln, lest it crumble at the first touch of the rain.

Love is the oldest story, whispered before fire and written in the marrow of all who walk upright. It is both sword and balm, a promise that outlives the lips that speak it, changing those who dare to bear its weight.

The tyrant never calls himself a tyrant. He is the shepherd, the steward, the firm hand guiding the weak. He does not chain men but removes their choices, for chains are crude and choices are dangerous. And in time, they will thank him for it.

A machine may think, but it does not dream. It may answer, but it does not wonder. And so, for all its knowledge, it remains blind to the one truth beyond calculation: that wisdom is not in what we know, but in what we fail to understand.