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There is a difference between tragedy and blind brutal calamity. Tragedy has meaning, and there is dignity in it. Tragedy stands with its shoulders stiff and proud. But there is no meaning, no dignity, no fulfillment, in the death of a child.

— Walter M. Miller Jr. The Will (1953)

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More quotes by Walter M. Miller Jr.

If you try to save wisdom until the world is wise, Father, the world will never have it.

A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)

When Holy Church occasionally hinted that she still considered her authority to be supreme over all nations and superior to the authority of states, men in these times tended to snicker.

A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)

Encounters between strangers in the desert, while rare, were occasions of mutual suspicion, and masked by initial preparations on both sides for an incident that might prove either cordial or warlike.

A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)

The image of those cool green eyes lingered with him as long as life.

A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)

He had never seen a "Fallout," and he hoped he'd never see one. A consistent description of the monster had not survived, but Francis had heard the legends.

A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)

All Walter M. Miller Jr. quotes →

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To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

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The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die.

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The thunderstorm is a constant phenomenon, raging alternately over some part of the world or the other. Can a single man or creature escape death if all that charge of lightning strikes the earth?

Kalki Krishnamurthy Sivakozhundu of Tiruvazhundur (1939)

So what if a kid dies? God will take care of him.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Walter M. Miller Jr. (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.