Any fool can see the limits of seeing, but not even the wisest know the limits of knowing. Thus is ignorance rendered invisible, and are all Men made fools.
There was nothing the ignorant prized more than the ignorance of others.
You know nothing of war. War is dark. Black as pitch. It is not a God. It does not laugh or weep. It rewards neither skill nor daring. It is not a trial of souls, not the measure of wills. Even less i...
You can only believe so many lies before becoming one of them.
Where power was perceived, power was given.
Where hard life makes some maudlin to the point of weeping at mere memory, it grants others a curious immunity to suffering. Like the slaves who work the charcoal pits, their skin grows hardened to th...
We make a sad couple, she said, as though making a casual observation. Why would you say that? A sorcerer and a harlot . . . There’s something sad about that. He grasped her hand and kissed the tips o...
Water everywhere, falling in thundering cataracts, singular drops, and draping sheets. Kellhus paused next to one of the shining braziers, peered beneath the bronze visage that loomed orange and scowl...
To be a student required a peculiar kind of capitulation, a willingness not simply to do as one is told, but to surrendor the movements of one's soul to the unknown complexities of another's. A willin...
Screens of tumbling water, breaking the world beyond them into glittering lines and smeared shadows. Kellhus had ceased trying to penetrate them.Power, Anasûrimbor Moënghus said, is always power over....
Power does not make safe. History murders the children of weak rulers.
Piety was simple, and the World, woefully complex. What was virtuous, what was holy: these were verities that only the simple and the enslaved could know with certainty.
One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten.
One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten. Heartbroken,
Of course he could see only blackness, such was the treachery of fire, which iluminated small circles by darkening the entire world.
Love is lust made meaningful. Hope is hunger made human.
If soot stains your tunic, dye it black. This is vengeance.
I am Cnaiur urs Skiötha, breaker-of-horses-and-men!,
He saw clearly now why he so loved this species of war. On the field of battle, his every act was open to the scrutiny of others. Here, however, he stood outside scrutiny, enacted destiny from a place...
For whatever reason, heavy drinking at once intensified and deadened the Dreams. The way they slurred into one another made them seem less immediate, more dreamlike, but the passions that accompanied...