Habits were such lies, such lies, lulling them into the feeling that there was something that was lasting, when really nothing lasted.

- from Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

They were specks in this universe, specks! But what ideas they had. People would do anything for the sake of an idea, anything.

- from Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Now, in this moment, they were two old brothers in arms, sitting on a sea cliff. After all the years of struggle they could sit out there all afternoon if they liked, flying a kite and talking. Discussing their old friends and the weather. There had been trouble before, there would be trouble again; but here they were.

- from Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

P. was silenced, and betook himself to the bottled stout.

- from "The Spectre of Tappington" by Richard Harris Barham

The heart is pleased by one thing after another.

- from Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

It's pointless to achieve a red Mars by pouring blood over the planet. We have to find another way. We can't do it by killing people. Not even by killing animals or plants, or blowing up machines. It won't work. It's destructive. It doesn't appeal to people, do you understand? No one is won over. In fact they're put off. The more we do things like that, the more green they become. So we defeat our purpose. If we know that and do it anyway, then we're betraying the purpose. Do you understand? We aren't doing it for anything but our own feelings. Because we're angry. Or for thrills. We have to find another way.

- from Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Cold, light, and selfish in the last resort, he had that modicum of prudence, miscalled morality, which keeps a man from inconvenient drunkenness or punishable theft.

- from "The Body-Snatcher" by Robert Louis Stevenson

"I'm a man of my word," Jeevan said. At that point in his directionless life he wasn't sure if this was true or not, but it was nice to think that it might be.

- from Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

"Gene Roddenberry [...] initially tapping a woman as the first officer (to be portrayed by Majel Barrett) [...]" - from "More Than 'Just Uhura'" by Margaret A. Weitekamp in Star Trek and History

My fondest hope is that the author's phrasing here is intentional.

John 16:33: "I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer. I have overcome the world." 

...when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you.

- from Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

"Maybe we weren't meant for Paradise. Maybe we were meant to fight our way through, struggle, claw our way up, scratch for every inch of the way. Maybe we can't stroll to the music of the lute, we must march to the sound of drums."
- Kirk, "This Side of Paradise"

Getting to my seventeenth birthday felt like steps taken slowly down a path where I saw each pebble, noticed each leaf, and felt pleasantly bored and anticipatory at the same time. Now it feels as if I am running down the path, flat out and breathing hard.

- from Matched by Ally Condie

That's what it's come to, Miller thought, rubbing a hand across his chin. Pogroms after all. Cut off just a hundred more heads, just a thousand more heads, just ten thousand more heads, and then we'll be free.

- from Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey

The world pours in and overflows the heart till speech is useless, and that's a fact.

- from The Wild Shore by Kim Stanley Robinson