Hardness shatters; strength endures.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the difference between being rigid and being resilient.
Robert Jordan's quote suggests that while a hard and unyielding attitude may lead to destruction, true strength lies in the ability to endure challenges and adapt over time. It emphasizes that resilience and flexibility are more valuable traits than mere toughness, as they enable one to overcome adversity without breaking.
In practice
During a motivational speech at a community center.
Fantasy is an area where it is possible to talk about right and wrong, good and evil, with a straight face. In mainstream fiction and even in a good deal of mystery, these things are presented as simply two sides of the same coin. Never really more than a matter of where you happen to be standing.
The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.
Til shade is gone, til water is gone Into the shadow with teeth bared Screaming defiance with the last breath To spit in Sightblinder’s eye on the Last Day.
He came like the wind, like the wind touched everything, and like the wind was gone. -from The Dragon Reborn. By Loial, son of Arent son of Halan, the Fourth Age.
The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.
Duty is heavier than a mountain, Dai Shan.' That time, Lan did flinch. How long had it been since someone had been able to do that to him with mere words? He remembered teaching that same concept to a youth out of the Two Rivers. A sheepherder, innocent of the world, fearful of the fate laid out before him by the Pattern.
Even when we talked about child labor, we were frowned upon. But then you know that you have to speak the truth irrespective of the repercussions.
I dare not so honor my mere wishes and prayers as to put them for a moment beside your noble acts; but this know, I would rather submit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured on the pretence of sparing me a twinge or two.
It takes more courage to send men into battle than to fight the battle yourself.
We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.
To fear to face an issue is to believe that the worst is true.
I'm like thousands of women in South Africa who lost their men to cities and prisons... I stand defiant, tall and strong.
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