Quotes and Sayings I Like

“The tallest tree gets the wind.”

— Zhuo Fan (The Steward Demonic Emperor)

It closely mirrors the Chinese idiom 树大招风 (shù dà zhāo fēng), “a big tree attracts the wind”, first recorded in the Ming-dynasty novel Journey to the West (1592). This resonates with my understanding of a broader Chinese mindset that values modesty, balance, and staying low rather than seeking prominence.

“Their memory serves as an example to us all!
The courageous fallen! The anguished fallen!
Their lives have meaning because we, the living, refuse to forget them!
And as we ride to certain death, we trust our successors to do the same for us!”

— Erwin Smith (Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin))

“A king never wavers, never bends, never relies on others, and never gives up.”

— Qin Shi Huang (Record of Ragnarok)

“Wherever I sit, that place shall become my throne.”

— Qin Shi Huang (Record of Ragnarok)

“80 percent of success is showing up.”

— usually attributed to Woody Allen

“Drinking wine and being joyful is my creed;
Being free from both unbelief and religion is my religion.
I asked the Bride of Time: ‘What is your dowry?’
She answered: ‘Your cheerful heart is my dowry.’”

— Omar Khayyam

“What’s the biggest lie you were ever told?
— It’s not that simple.
No, that’s the biggest lie I was ever told: ‘It’s not that simple.’
And it’s a lie they tell you over and over again.
What’s not simple? Any of it. All of it.
It’s how they get you to give up.”

— Vinny Pazienza (Bleed for This)

“Kids who have never seen peace and kids who have never seen war have different values!”

— Donquixote Doflamingo (One Piece, Marineford Arc)

“Those who stand at the top determine what’s wrong and what’s right! This very place is neutral ground! Justice will prevail, you say? But of course it will! Whoever wins this war becomes justice!”

— Donquixote Doflamingo (One Piece, Marineford Arc)

“Next time you think you are making an independent choice, ask yourself: who benefits from this choice I make?
Did I really choose, or did someone engineer it in my mind and choose it for me?”

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

— usually attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte

Often misattributed to Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, where it does not appear.

“Why would I chase a glacier when there’s a perfectly good sunshine right in front of me?”

“Did I owe the entire Milky Way money to end up with this?”

“Fortune favors the bold.”

— Latin proverb

Found in Virgil’s Aeneid as audentes fortuna iuvat and in Terence as fortes fortuna adiuvat.

“Your religion is only based on geography, nothing more.”

“Just knowing someone out there is listening to it… it fills my heart.”

“If equity exists, then there is no god.”

“Take me as the meaning of your life.”

“If you believe in God and he does not exist, you lose everything.”

The opposite of Pascal’s Wager (Blaise Pascal, Pensées), which says you lose nothing, the most absurd thing I heard growing up. The bet is not free: you stake your time and your mind, and that stake is too big for the odds of winning to justify it.

“Although money, opportunities and the right conditions to grow are not distributed fairly, sorrow, strangely, is shared equally among people, and everyone can have their share of it.”

— Fatemeh Aghajanlou