Quotes About Power

He didn't mention the other part of the book. That following the heroes when they set out was the tenth member of their party. A broken creature who went through all the same dangers and trials, who had made a single bad choice and taken up a power he didn't understand - and who had become a demented, miserable, living nightmare because of it. In the end, he had been just as necessary to the overthrow of the darkness. But he sure as hell didn't enjoy his part.

Dresden," she said, "I cannot stress to you enough how vital it is that we avoid general hostilities, even with a relatively small power." Translation: Don't start another war, Harry. "But," she continued, "we can afford to lose the paths through Winter even less." Translation: Unless you really have to.

They're always too strong. There's always more of them, and they're always too strong.

You may never know a night's peace again. Knowledge is power, young man. Power to do good and power to do harm. Some knowledge can hurt. Some can kill.

Mortals prattle on about lonely impulses of delight and the gift of knowledge, and think that teaching is a trade like metalsmithing or healing or telling lies on television. It is not. It is the dissemination of power unto a new generation and nothing less. For her, as for you, lessons demand real risk in order to attain their true rewards.

I reflected that odds were that not a lot of clandestine meetings involving mystical assassination, theft of arcane power, and the balance of power in the realms of the supernatural had taken place in a Wal-Mart Super Center.

Magic comes from life, from the energy of our world and from people, from their emotions and their will. That's what I had always been taught.

seeing a wizard cut loose can do that to

Hell's bells, I snarled, taking an involuntary step back. Right here? Now? You could have given me a couple of minutes to get clear, dammit. And what fun would that be? Maeve asked, pushing out her lower lip in a pout. I am who I am, too. I love violence. I love treachery. I love your pain - and the best part, the part I love most, is that I am doing it for your own good. Her eyes gleamed white all the way around her irises. This is me being one of the good guys.

Crap," I gasped. "I am not going to be known as the wizard who used his death curse thanks to a bunch of bitty nail guns.

Many, many mantles are worn—or discarded—on Halloween night, wizard.

I just put the Erlking on the bench and laid a beatdown on freaking Santa Claus!' I told them. 'So you tell me, who's next?

Fear is a funny thing. In the right light, even tiny and insignificant fears can suddenly grow, swelling up to monstrous proportions.

Raw power doesn't determine all that you can do with magic. Focus matters, too. The better your focus is, the better you are at putting your power in one place at the same time, the more you can get done.

Chicago is an alien citadel, a source of power and terror. Mordor, basically. (One does not simply walk into Mordor - except that was exactly what everyone in the story did anyway.)

Anything with that much power and that little control, that utter lack of concern for anything but self is evil in the most effective sense of the word.

Magic comes from the heart, from your feelings, your deepest expressions of desire.

That's why black magic is so easy—it comes from lust, from fear and anger, from things that are easy to feed and make grow.

But mostly, it ends badly when wizards try to stay too close to their kin.

I will not live in a realm where calculations of power supersede justice and law - regardless of how inconvenient that may be to the Crown.

Because nothing cuts through bullshit like a proper fireball.

Words have a power every bit as terrible and beautiful as magic.

rocket launcher like it was a coat. Karrin let him, giving him an edged smile that she directed past him, to the shadows where the Genoskwa lurked. "I didn't kill the accountant," she said quietly. "Nicodemus said not to." That surprised me a little. If she wanted to hide herself from me, she didn't need to go to the effort of lying. All she had to do was stay silent. "He said that to all of us," I said.

Words have a power every bit as terrible and beautiful as magic, and they don't need a special effects budget to do it, either.