Teller Of Small Fortunes Quotes

There’s no such thing as greater good—there’s just good, and the more of it we can do, the better.

All cats are slightly magical, don't you know? It's why they're so smug all the time.

And I don’t give a rat’s ass whether or not that’s worthy enough a purpose for the likes of you. I am more than just what I do; I am a person, and I am alive, and that is purpose enough.

And the suspicion turns to fear, and the fear, as it always does, turns to anger.

What was a home but somewhere you wouldn’t have to feel quite so alone?

And there’s no inherent virtue in suffering.

I think," [...] "That the old heroes were probably just like us. And there's nothing wrong with being just you.

our lives are short and shaped by circumstance, and maybe we can’t control most of what’s to come. But we can control how we feel. We can savor the sweetness of a blackberry scone, and the company of our friends, and the warmth of the summer wind at night, and be grateful for it. We can be nothing, and choose to be miserable about it, like you—or we can be nothing, but choose to be happy, and let that be purpose enough.

We’re not always cheerful and funny. We’ve sadness, and anxiety, and all these other bitter things wrapped up inside, too, and that’s what makes the sweetness all the sweeter.

Fear is the cost of power, Tao. Every mage is afraid. We just learn how to push past it—to use it instead of letting ourselves be imprisoned by it.

A troll,” repeated Mash grimly, hefting his mace out of its belt loop. “Did it attack you? Threaten violence; seize your goods?” “Eh? No, of course not. It’s worse than that,” said the farmer. “It went and philosophized at us!

Easy to blame foreign folk for anything going wrong, when they’re not here to say otherwise. Easier still when they look and talk funny, and don’t pray to the Mother or her Sons.

If you’re swindling us, I swear you’ll regret it. And if I die, my ghost’s coming after you. With a very big axe.

I am sad that you have lost so much,” said the old man, empty hand falling back against his side. “I hope you find new joys to take their place.

But men are shortsighted. Especially when a heavy crown is blocking their eyes.

Because I’m here! And why not! Aye, our lives are short and shaped by circumstance, and maybe we can’t control most of what’s to come. But we can control how we feel. We can savor the sweetness of a blackberry scone, and the company of our friends, and the warmth of the summer wind at night, and be grateful for it. We can be nothing, and choose to be miserable about it, like you—or we can be nothing, but choose to be happy, and let that be purpose enough. Which sounds more worthwhile to you?

Everyone deserves a home, Tao thought, patting Laohu’s whiskery grey nose. And what was a home but somewhere you wouldn’t have to feel quite so alone?

Sometimes stories have to end so we can go back to real life.

I am more than just what I do; I am a person, and I am alive, and that is purpose enough.

I know all their favorites. It's a knack, a professional secret, like a fortune teller reading palms. My mother would have laughed at this waste of my skills, but I have no desire to probe farther into their lives than this. I do not want their secrets or their innermost thoughts. Nor do I want their fears or gratitude. A tame alchemist, she would have called me with kindly contempt, working domestic magic when I could have wielded marvels. But I like these people. I like their small and introverted concerns. I can read their eyes, their mouths, so easily- this one with its hint of bitterness will relish my zesty orange twists; this sweet-smiling one the soft-centered apricot hearts; this girl with the windblown hair will love the mendiants; this brisk, cheery woman the chocolate brazils. For Guillaume, the florentines, eaten neatly over a saucer in his tidy bachelor's house. Narcisse's appetite for double-chocolate truffles reveals the gentle heart beneath the gruff exterior. Caroline Clairmont will dream of cinder toffee tonight and wake hungry and irritable. And the children... Chocolate curls, white buttons with colored vermicelli, pain d'épices with gilded edging, marzipan fruits in their nests of ruffled paper, peanut brittle, clusters, cracknells, assorted misshapes in half-kilo boxes... I sell dreams, small comforts, sweet harmless temptations to bring down a multitude of saints crash-crash-crashing among the hazels and nougatines....

There was just enough room for the tonga to get through among the bullock-carts, rickshaws, cycles and pedestrians who thronged both the road and the pavement--which they shared with barbers plying their trade out of doors, fortune-tellers, flimsy tea-stalls, vegetable-stands, monkey-trainers, ear-cleaners, pickpockets, stray cattle, the odd sleepy policeman sauntering along in faded khaki, sweat-soaked men carrying impossible loads of copper, steel rods, glass or scrap paper on their backs as they yelled 'Look out! Look out!' in voices that somehow pierced though the din, shops of brassware and cloth (the owners attempting with shouts and gestures to entice uncertain shoppers in), the small carved stone entrance of the Tinny Tots (English Medium) School which opened out onto the courtyard of the reconverted haveli of a bankrupt aristocrat, and beggars--young and old, aggressive and meek, leprous, maimed or blinded--who would quietly invade Nabiganj as evening fell, attempting to avoid the police as they worked the queues in front of the cinema-halls. Crows cawed, small boys in rags rushed around on errands (one balancing six small dirty glasses of tea on a cheap tin tray as he weaved through the crowd) monkeys chattered in and bounded about a great shivering-leafed pipal tree and tried to raid unwary customers as they left the well-guarded fruit-stand, women shuffled along in anonymous burqas or bright saris, with or without their menfolk, a few students from the university lounging around a chaat-stand shouted at each other from a foot away either out of habit or in order to be heard, mangy dogs snapped and were kicked, skeletal cats mewed and were stoned, and flies settled everywhere: on heaps of foetid, rotting rubbish, on the uncovered sweets at the sweetseller's in whose huge curved pans of ghee sizzled delicioius jalebis, on the faces of the sari-clad but not the burqa-clad women, and on the horse's nostrils as he shook his blinkered head and tried to forge his way through Old Brahmpur in the direction of the Barsaat Mahal.

A fortune teller told me if I can predict your future, You give me some small change, to which I replied why, he said, for my knowledge about Your life, I did not need that, he replied as I yours Father's and Mother can call by name than You give me money, which I answered as you come to me as a soothsayer and do not know whether I will or do not pay then You walk down on the wrong path for Your future, and are You a cheater. So please stop to tell stories about others when You not even know them in person or about their past for sure. A story from another is many time not based on the true, so let that story rest before till You know its a honest one, and not let lead it a way so it damage somebody's private life. This is not pointed to a person, but general in life. keep smiling and a good day Jan Jansen

Golosh Street is an interesting locality. All the oddities of trade seemed to have found their way thither and made an eccentric mercantile settlement. There is a bird-shop at one corner. Immediately opposite is an establishment where they sell nothing but ornaments made out of the tinted leaves of autumn, varnished and gummed into various forms. Further down is a second-hand book-stall. There is a small chink between two ordinary-sized houses, in which a little Frenchman makes and sells artificial eyes, specimens of which, ranged on a black velvet cushion, stare at you unwinkingly through the window as you pass, until you shudder and hurry on, thinking how awful the world would be if everyone went about without eyelids. Madame Filomel, the fortune-teller, lives at No. 12 Golosh Street, second storey front, pull the bell on the left-hand side. Next door to Madame is the shop of Herr Hippe, commonly called the Wondersmith. ("The Wondersmith")

At about this time a hitherto unsuccessful fortune teller living on the other side of the block chanced to glance into her scrying bowl, gave a small scream and, within the hour, had sold her jewelry, various magical accoutrements, most of her clothes and almost all her other possessions that could not be conveniently carried on the fastest horse she could buy. The fact that later on, when her house collapsed in flames, she herself died in a freak landslide in the Morpork Mountains, proves that Death, too, has a sense of humor.

The whole place is now beginning to close down. At some of the booths the flares have been extinguished, and the occupants are busy packing up their wares and taking down their tents and wooden stalls. Huge vans have appeared upon the scene, and men in shirt sleeves are busily engaged in packing them. We accost a small dirty youth and ask him if the fair is moving. ‘We’ll be on the road in twa hours,’ he replies briefly. ‘What a life!’ ejaculates Tony. ‘Aye, it’s a fine life,’ echoes the boy. ‘Ye get seeing the wurrld in a fair.’ All mystery has departed from the fortune teller’s tent; it is merely a heap of dirty canvas. A large, fat woman with greasy black hair, and a red shawl pinned across her inadequately clad bosom, is dancing about with a flaming torch in her hand, directing operations in a shrill shrewish voice. ‘Guthrie’s sybil!’ says Tony sadly. ‘I’m afraid we’ve stayed too long at the party.’ ‘I think it is rather fun,’ I reply. ‘I like seeing things that I’m not meant to see

Yet there were, in fact, nearly two hundred women and children still on board the Titanic. More than half of them were waiting in the third-class public rooms and corridors or on the decks near the stern. At 1:30 a.m. the gates on the stairs up from third class had been opened for women but many had chosen to remain with their men. Father Thomas Byles circulated among the third-class passengers, hearing confessions and reciting the rosary with them. At 2:00 a.m. the gates were opened for third-class men as well as women, and many more steerage passengers soon crowded the boat deck. As he began loading Collapsible D on the port side, Lightoller was forced to pull his revolver to clear a crowd of what he called “dagoes” out of the boat. He then formed a cordon of crewmen to prevent a rush on the boat. As small knots of steerage women were escorted across the deck toward the last boat, there were still a few women from first class on board as well. Archibald Gracie was shocked to see Caroline Brown and Edith Evans standing by the starboard railing. He had escorted Evans and the three Lamson sisters to the staircase landing below the boat deck over an hour ago and had then gone in search of his other “unprotected” ward, Helen Candee, but discovered that she had already gone up on deck. Caroline Brown began to explain to Gracie how they had become separated from the others, but he and Jim Smith simply hustled them both toward the ring of men surrounding Collapsible D. Once they were let through, Edith Evans said to Caroline Brown, “You go first. You are married and have children.” Brown was then lifted into the lifeboat, but when Evans went to follow, she was unable to clamber over the railing in her tapered skirt. “Never mind,” she called out to Brown, “I will go on a later boat,” and turned and hurried away down the deck. Evans had earlier told Archibald Gracie that she had been told by a fortune-teller to beware of water and that she now knew she would be drowned. Gracie had dismissed this as superstition but Edith Evans would become one of only four women from first class to perish.

Later, I sat down drunk on the corner of Carondelet and Canal Streets, listening for the rumble of the streetcar that would take me back uptown to my apartment, watching the evening sun bleed from the streets, the city shifting into night, when it truly became New Orleans: the music, the constant festival, the smell of late evening dinners pouring out, layering the beer-soaked streets, prostitutes, clubs with DJs, rowdy gay bars, dirty strip clubs, the insane out for a walk, college students vomiting in trash cans, daiquiri bars lit up like supermarkets, washing-machine-sized mixers built into the wall spinning every color of daiquiri, lone trumpet players, grown women crying, clawing at men in suits, portrait painters, spangers (spare change beggars), gutter punks with dogs, kids tap-dancing with spinning bike wheels on their heads, the golden cowboy frozen on a milk crate, his golden gun pointed at a child in the crowd, fortune-tellers, psycho preachers, mumblers, fighters, rock-faced college boys out for a date rape, club chicks wearing silver miniskirts, horse-drawn carriages, plastic cups piling against the high curbs of Bourbon Street, jazz music pressing up against rock-and-roll cover bands, murderers, scam artists, hippies selling anything, magic shows and people on unicycles, flying cockroaches the size of pocket rockets, rats without fear, men in drag, business execs wandering drunk in packs, deciding not to tell their wives, sluts sucking dick on open balconies, cops on horseback looking down blouses, cars wading across the river of drunks on Bourbon Street, the people screaming at them, pouring drinks on the hood, putting their asses to the window, whole bars of people laughing, shot girls with test tubes of neon-colored booze, bouncers dragging skinny white boys out by their necks, college girls rubbing each other’s backs after vomiting tequila, T-shirts, drinks sold in a green two-foot tube with a small souvenir grenade in the bottom, people stumbling, tripping, falling, laughing on the sidewalk in the filth, laughing too hard to stand back up, thin rivers of piss leaking out from corners, brides with dirty dresses, men in G-strings, mangy dogs, balloon animals, camcorders, twenty-four-hour 3-4-1, free admission, amateur night, black-eyed strippers, drunk bicyclers, clouds of termites like brown mist surrounding streetlamps, ventriloquists, bikers, people sitting on mailboxes, coffee with chicory, soul singers, the shoeless, the drunks, the blissful, the ignorant, the beaten, the assholes, the cheaters, the douche bags, the comedians, the holy, the broken, the affluent, the beggars, the forgotten, and the soft spring air pregnant with every scent created by such a town.

succinctly,

He looked at Mash in befuddlement, who simply shrugged back—the universal symbol of men who have failed to understand something very important.

Still, Tao looked around at the beaming faces of her friends, and let herself feel joy; she was a cup of tea, overflowing with warmth and wrapped in loving hands.