Friday, October 21st, 2011/5:55am EST~Deltona, Florida

“I often hear people say that they read to escape reality, but I believe that what they’re really doing is reading to find reason for hope, to find strength. While a bad book leaves readers with a sense of hopelessness and despair, a good novel, through stories of values realized, of wrongs righted, can bring to readers a connection to the wonder of life. A good novel shows how life can and ought to be lived. It not only entertains but energizes and uplifts readers.”
― Terry Goodkind

This image here below is a composite of the books in Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth Series.  When he moved in with me last year, my son Thomas brought the first 3 books with him and when, just after I returned sober from Annie’s farm on Mother’s Day of this year, at Thomas’ enthusiastic prompting, I began reading them and haven’t been able to stop!  As of today, I have about 200 pages left in the last book, Confessor.   I am savoring every last word!

This fantasy novel series has given me a new outlook on life.  They’ve helped me to stay sober and to embrace new ideals.  Sometimes, after a L-O-N-G stint reading–say, 6 to 8 hours–I will dream about the characters in the books!  Once, I dreamed I was Kahlan Amnell, the Mother Confessor. LOL

If you’re a reader of novels, I highly recommend this series.  Not only will it entertain and inspire you but you may find, as I have, that Mr. Goodkind’s philosophy of life rearranges your brain!  Three hearty cheers for BOOKS and the wonder of IMAGINATION!  Thank You Terry!

“Knowledge is a weapon. I intend to be formidably armed.”
― Terry Goodkind

Quotes From The Books

“Every person’s life is theirs by right. An individual’s life can and must belong only to to himself, not to any society or community, or he is then but a slave.”

“People are stupid. They will believe a lie because they want to believe it’s true, or because they are afraid it might be true.”
― Terry Goodkind, Wizard’s First Rule

“I’m afraid that we all make mistakes. One of the things that defines our character is how we handle mistakes. If we lie about having made a mistake, then it can’t be corrected and it festers. On the other hand, if we give up just because we made a mistake, even a big mistake, none of us would get far in life.”
― Terry Goodkind, Confessor

“Nothing marks a man’s character better than his attraction to intelligence.”
― Terry Goodkind

 “The Second Rule is that the greatest harm can result from the best intentions. It sounds a paradox, but kindness and good intentions can be an insidious path to destruction. Sometimes doing what seems right is wrong, and can cause harm. The only counter to it is knowledge, wisdom, forethought, and understanding the First Rule. Even then, that is not always enough.”
― Terry Goodkind, Stone of Tears

“…Wizard’s Fifth Rule: Mind what people do, not only what they say, for deeds will betray a lie.”
― Terry Goodkind

“To exist in this vast universe for a speck of time is the great gift of life. Our tiny sliver of time is our gift of life. It is our only life. The universe will go on, indifferent to our brief existence, but while we are here we touch not just part of that vastness, but also the lives around us. Life is the gift each of us has been given. Each life is our own and no one else’s. It is precious beyond all counting. It is the greatest value we can have. Cherish it for what it truly is….. Your life is yours alone. Rise up and live it.”
― Terry Goodkind

“The first law of reason is that what exists, exists; what is, is, and that from this ineducible, bedrock principle, all knowledge is built…that is the foundation from which life is embraced… thinking is a choice…wishes and whims are not facts, nor are they a means to discover them… reason is our only way of grasping reality–it’s our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking–to reject reason–but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss we refuse to see… Reason is the very substance of truth itself. The glory that is life is wholly embraced through reason. In rejecting reason one embraces death.”
― Terry Goodkind, Faith of the Fallen

“We all can be only who we are, no more, no less.”
― Terry Goodkind, Stone of Tears

“If you are unwilling to defend your right to your own lives,
then you are merely like mice trying to argue with owls.
You think their ways are wrong.
They think you are dinner.”
― Terry Goodkind, Naked Empire

“Not everyone is willing to embrace liberty; liberty requires not just effort, but risk. Some people choose to delude themselves and see their chains as protective armor.”
― Terry Goodkind, Chainfire

“The light of a new day always chases the shadows of the night away, and shows us that the shape of our fears is only the ghost of our own minds.”
― Terry Goodkind, Wizard’s First Rule

“Wrong doing must be punished. If not, it will proliferate until anarchy wears the robes of tolerance and understanding.”
― Terry Goodkind, Blood of the Fold

“….like I learned as I grew up, you’ll find that being a friend is to like a person for who they are, even the parts you don’t understand. The reasons you like them makes the things you don’t understand unimportant. You don’t have to understand, or do the same, or live their lives for them. If you truly care for them, then you want them to be who they are; that was why you liked them in the first place.”
― Terry Goodkind, Blood of the Fold

“Wizard’s Tenth Rule
Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to one’s self.”
― Terry Goodkind, Phantom

“Think of the solution, not the problem”
― Terry Goodkind

“Wizard’s Fourth Rule
There is magic in sincere forgiveness; in the forgiveness you give, but more so in the forgiveness you receive.”
― Terry Goodkind, Temple of the Winds

“Culture carries no privilege to exist. Cultures do not have value simply because they are. Some cultures, the world is better off without.”
― Terry Goodkind

“Wizard’s Third Rule
Passion rules reason, For better or for worse.”
― Terry Goodkind, Blood of the Fold

“Wizard’s Seventh Rule
Life is the future, not the past.”
― Terry Goodkind, The Pillars of Creation

“Wizard’s Eighth Rule
Talga Vassternich.
(Deserve Victory)”
― Terry Goodkind, Naked Empire

“Wizard’s Ninth Rule
A contradiction can not exist in reality. Not in part, nor in whole.”
― Terry Goodkind, Chainfire

“Truth has advocates who seek understanding,” Richard said. “Corrupt ideas have miserable little fanatics who attempt to enforce their beliefs through intimidation and brutality… through faith. Savage force is faith’s obedient servant. Violence on an apocalyptic scale can only be born of faith because reason, by its very nature, disarms senseless cruelty. Only faith thinks to justify it.”
― Terry Goodkind, Confessor

“Zedd used to tell me that if the road is easy, you’re likely going the wrong way.” – Richard”
― Terry Goodkind

“…You have to accept yourself, who you are. You don’t believe. You still fight who you are. Until you accept yourself, until you believe, you won’t be able to call forth your Han, your power, except in great anger.”
― Terry Goodkind, Stone of Tears

“If you want to be a slave in life, then continue going around asking others to do for you. They will oblige, but you will find the price is your choices, your freedom, your life itself. They will do for you, and as a result you will be in bondage to them forever, having given your identity away for a paltry price. Then, and only then, you will be a nobody, a slave, because you yourself and nobody else made it so.”
― Terry Goodkind, The Pillars of Creation

“Are we our bodies? Is a small person less than a big person, then? If we were our bodies, then when we lost an arm, or a leg, would we be less, would we begin to fade from existence? No. We are the same person.

We are not our bodies; we are our thoughts. As they form, they define who we are, and create the reality of our existence.”
― Terry Goodkind, Blood of the Fold

“People use democracy as a free-floating abstraction disconnected from reality. Democracy in and of itself is not necessarily good. Gang rape, after all, is democracy in action.

All men have the right to live their own life. Democracy must be rooted in a rational philosophy that first and foremost recognizes the right of an individual. A few million Imperial Order men screaming for the lives of a much smaller number of people in the New World may win a democratic vote, but it does not give them the right to those lives, or make their calls for such killing right.

Democracy is not a synonym for justice or for freedom. Democracy is not a sacred right sanctifying mob rule. Democracy is a principle that is subordinate to the inalienable rights of the individual.”
― Terry Goodkind, Naked Empire

“There were those who loved liberty, who cried out to live their own lives, to strive, to rise above, to achieve, and those bent on the mindless equality of stagnation brought about through the enforcement of an artificial, arbitrary, gray uniformity–those who wanted to transcend through their own effort, and those who wanted others to think for them and were willing to pay the ultimate price.”
― Terry Goodkind, Faith of the Fallen