Top 35 Jonathan Renshaw Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “A mystery is so much more exciting than a wrapped up answer, wouldn’t you say? A mystery carries on but an answer just ends.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

2. “You are going to beat it, even if it takes a very long time. Tulia always says that big forests are cleared the same way as small forests, but it just takes longer. I know this thing inside you is a big forest, but it’s going to come down eventually. I know it.” Her.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

3. “But more importantly, the exercise was to move you to empathy and broaden your understanding of what it is to be human.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

4. “Prejudice creates blindness; it is too busy hating to think. No matter how justified it might feel, prejudice will shackle you.” “But.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

5. “My father told me I could not be a true friend without sharing some of my friend’s enemies.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

6. “The irony of war,” he said. “It has always been this way. We are taught to think that the battle lines separate the good from the bad, but the truth, as you are beginning to understand, is less comfortable.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

7. “Think boys, think! I cannot do it for you.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

8. “People who seek answers are often not looking for truth.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

9. “And Aedan discovered that it only takes a single friend to put loneliness to flight. He would be able to face the next day. They both would.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

10. “Revenge is a selfish pursuit full of empty promise – I would know,” he said. “But you speak of justice, of defending the innocent by felling their oppressor. I see that anger is still fierce in you, but I believe you’ll learn to temper it with wisdom.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

11. “I’ve always found it better to face lies than turn from them.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

12. “Kind and sweet people are kind and sweet to everyone, not just the people they like.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

13. “I would rather be the person who steps in front of a whole gang to defend someone and gets beaten up for it than the person who watches from a safe hiding. There were times I hid, and I think the shame hurts more than the bruises would have.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

14. “Aedan noticed how the lowest doors were all eight feet above the ground with stairs leading up to them – stairs that could theoretically be destroyed when under threat. But where the stairs should have been made from wood, these were of polished granite. Clearly there was a conflict of values here.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

15. “You won’t win like that Aedan. Remember what Dun taught us – fear and rage can both make a man stupid.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

16. “If you were able to point people to a real god, I suspect a lot of them would prefer their own creations – easier to control, less likely to make demands.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

17. “The confession of ignorance is crucial to the pursuit of knowledge. Another way of putting it is that those who pretend to know never will – they lack the humility to learn.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

18. “There is most certainly a good time to run, just as there is a bad time. When the nation has more to gain by your getting away and living than by your standing proud and dying, then you run.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

19. “Understanding a society means understanding the whole society, not just the part that dresses well.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

20. “I read somewhere that the best word for things that are bigger than words is wonder. It’s now my favourite word and I need it here, because I think the time we are living in is going to be a dawn of wonder, the beginning of something incredible, a time of mysteries and legends and heroes, just like in the old stories.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

21. “You would think,′ Aedan said, ’that I’d feel good about this-I’ve grown while he, my old enemy, has shrunk. Yet all I feel is a terrible ache. I pity him, that he has been called by age to surrender his strength.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

22. “I hate mysteries that are forbidden. They are like meals you have to watch other people eat.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

23. “One thing he shared with the singing bird was a love of rain and especially of storms. He always felt a deep thrill of awe when the pale sapphire cloaks of sky were flung aside and dark raging heavens roared and plunged and cast fire and water and ice upon the earth. Something.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

24. “Without imagination, things were only as they appeared – and that was blindness. Things were more than they appeared, so much more. When he considered an oak tree, it was not just a tree. To someone small, like an ant, it was a whole landscape of rugged barky cliffs and big green leaf-plains that quaked when the sky was restless, a place of many strange creatures where fearsome winged beasts could pluck and devour someone in a blink.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

25. “Though her eyes had looked drained of every last tear, they flooded again.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

26. “I always hated... all sad songs. I thought they made happy people miserable. Now I think I understand them better. Bards write them because they can’t hold them back. Sadness has got to flow out or it gets stuck and turns bitter.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

27. “Aedan had never felt embarrassed about his imagination. Without it there was no magic.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

28. “Perhaps,” he said. He wondered if she knew how much hope stood behind the word.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

29. “I don’t care how unassailable it is,” Aedan said, standing. “I’m assailing it.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

30. “First, the wind would rumble in the distance like an approaching river, then he would see grass bend, pressed by a great invisible hand. The dull rumble would rise in pitch to a swishing, lashing exultation, causing stalks to lie flat against the ground while the tougher branches of shrubs held themselves up and shrieked their defiance in the gusts. Then the first drops, cold and heavy, would plummet from the sky and burst on the ground.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

31. “Just so. You tried to establish a fact from a lack of evidence. Unless the inquiry has been so exhaustive as to explore every possibility, the lack of evidence should never be used to ground a statement of fact. Unlikelihood certainly, but no more. A prematurely assumed fact blocks further inquiry.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

32. “I was thinking of making a drawing of Malik,” she said. “He will be standing on a field of battle, taking off his helm and showing his pale skin. The soldiers around will be dropping their weapons and offering him medicine.” Aedan laughed.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

33. “If you had a hog,” he shouted, “your manners would make your mother unsure which one to feed on the floor.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

34. “He knew she would never have wanted rescue at this price, just as surely as he could not have withheld it.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

35. “He could not afford to indulge misery, to live in the past and stumble through life facing backwards.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

36. “You!” Skeet bellowed. When uttered with just the right tone, this is the universal name for any boy. Accordingly, all heads snapped towards the angry master.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

37. “Sadness has got to flow out or it gets stuck and turns bitter.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

38. “He realised how much he hated tyrants, the strong who stood on the weak.”

— Jonathan Renshaw

39. “Your bitterness will not aid you, and it will end up punishing those who care about you.” Aedan.”

— Jonathan Renshaw