Centures Quotes

For all its apparent speed, the ship was almost perfectly silent, and he experienced an enervating, eerie feeling, as though the ancient warship, mothballed all those centuries, had somehow not yet fully woken up, and events within its sleek hull still moved to another, slower tempo, made half of dreams. ~ Iain Banks

I have lived for four centures," he said. "Perhaps I am still a youth, in that all of us are, compared to the timeless age of the Wheel itself. That said, I am one of the oldest people in existence."
Moiraine smiled. "Very nice. Does that work on the others?"
He hesitated. Then, oddly, he found himself grinning. "It worked pretty well on Cadsuane."
Moiraine sniffed. "That one ... Well, knowing her, I doubt you fooled her as well as you assume. You may have the memories of a man four centuries old, Rand al'Thor, but that does not make you ancient. Otherwise, Matrim Cauthon would be the patriarch of us all."
"Mat? Why Mat?"
"It is nothing," Moiraine said. "Something I am not supposed to know. You are still a die-eyed sheepherder at heart. ~ Robert Jordan

Zen Buddhism, for example, as practiced by Suzuki, the excellent Japanese mystic, has nothing to do with the superstitious and predjudiced Buddhism that infested Asia for centuries. Sufism, as boasted by the subtle Gurdjeff, totally differs from the Islamism that shouts death to the "infidels." The doctrine of Vivekananda, inspired by his master Ramakrishna, is nothing like the Hinduism that suffocated India for centures of superstious and stupid passivity; the noble mysticism of Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher, is nothing like the bloody cultural narrowness and tribal elitism of the mosaic orthodoxy. ~ Marcelo Ramos Motta