Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
24 quotes
"I want you to go back into the barrack and tell the men to come out after the storm. Tell them to look up at me tied here. Tell them I’ll open my eyes and look back at them, and they’ll know hat I survived."
"I point out truths when I see them, Brightlord Sadeas. Each man has his place. Mine is to make insults. Yours is to be in-sluts."
"There are two kinds of people in this world, son. Those who save lives, and those who take lives.""And what of those who protect and defend? Those who save lives by taking lives?""That's like trying to stop a storm by blowing harder. Ridiculous. You can't protect by killing."
"Just because I do not accept the teachings of the devotaries does not mean I've discarded a belief in right and wrong." determines what is right!" right? I believe that my own morality -- which answers only to my heart -- is more sure and true than the morality of those who do right only because they fear retribution."
"Expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack."
"They didn’t speak as the sun slowly sank before them. Why was it most colorful when it was about to vanish for the night? Was it angry at being forced belong the horizon? Or was it a showman, giving a performance before retiring?Why was the most colorful part of people’s bodies—the brightness of their blood—hidden beneath the skin, never to be seen unless something went wrong?"
"Just because I do not accept the teachings of the devotaries does not mean I've discarded a belief in right and w"
"A scholar knows not to waste time rediscovering information already known."
"It is not the destination that matters, but how one arrives there."
"Those candle flames were like the lives of men. So fragile. So deadly. Left alone, they lit and warmed. Let run rampant, they would destroy the very things they were meant to illuminate. Embryonic bonfires, each bearing a seed of destruction so potent it could tumble cities and dash kings to their knees."
"Why is it you trust my daughter so much when others almost universally revile her?""I consider their disdain for her to be a recommendation," he said."She is a heretic.""She refused to join any of the devotaries because she did not believe in their teachings. Rather than compromise for the sake of appearances, she has been honest and has refused to make professions she does not believe. I find that a sign of honor."
"Too many of us take great pains with what we ingest through our mouths, and far less with what we partake of through our ears and eyes."
"You learned this,” Kabsal said, lifting up her drawing of Jasnah, “from a book.”“Er…yes?”He looked back at the picture. “I need to read more."
"Too many scholars think of research as purely a cerebral pursuit. If we do nothing with the knowledge we gain, then we have wasted our study. Books can store information better than we can--what we we do that books cannot is interpret. So if one is not going to draw conclusions, then one might as well just leave the information in the texts."
"Remember why we live. Remember warmth, remember good food. Remember friends, and song, and evenings spent around the hearth."
"Everything is a contest. All dealings among men are a contest in which some will succeed and others fail. And some are failing quite spectacularly."
"This lot won't suffer you forever.I wouldn't see you dead by their knives; I see a fine man within you Wit.""Yes, He tasted quite delicious."
"He'd never been an optimist. He saw the world as it was, or he tried to. That was a problem, though, when the truth he saw was so terrible."
"Sometimes the prize is not worth the costs. The means by which we achieve victory are as important as the victory itself."
"The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon."
"To be given loyalty is to be infused like a gemstone, to be granted the frightful license to destroy not only one's self, but all within one's care."
"One can have a wit, but not a witless"
"I hope to return. I’ll do so if I’m not killed. Probably will anyway."
"Does the king know you're back?""Nope! I'm trying to think of a properly dramatic way to inform him. Perhaps a hundred chasmfiends marching in unison, singing an ode to my magnificence.""That sounds… hard.""Yeah, the storming things have real trouble tuning their tonic chords and maintaining just intonation.""I have no idea what you just said.""Yeah, the storming things have real trouble tuning their tonic chords and maintaining just intonation."