Always Quotes (page 272)
No: that fear had been inside him for manyyears, it had lived with him, it had been another shadow cast over hisown shadow ever since the night he awoke, shaken by a bad dream, and realized that death was not only a permanent probability, as hehad always believed, but an immediate reality.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I never win anything," Dolorous Edd complained. "The gods always smiled on Watt, though. When the wildlings knocked him off the Bridge of Skulls, somehow he landed in a nice depp proof of water. How lucky was that, missing all those rocks?"Was it a long fall?" Green wanted to know. "Did landing in the pool of water save his life?"No," said Dolorous Edd. "He was dead already, from that axe in his head. Still, it was pretty lucky, missing the rocks.
George R. R. Martin
Cheap heroism is always easy, and even to sacrifice life is easy too; because it is only a case of hot blood and an overflow of energy, and there is such a longing for what is beautiful! No, take the deed of heroism that is labourious, obscure, without noise or flourish, slandered, in which there is a great deal of sacrifice and not one grain of glory - in which you, a splendid man, are made to look like a scoundrel before every one, though you might be the most honest man in the world - you...
Fyodor Dostoevsky