Quotes from Blood Song

“War is always an adventure to those who've never seen it.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Knowledge is what shapes us, little brothers,” he told them, for once his smile was absent, his tone entirely serious. “It makes us who we are. What we know informs everything we do and every decision we make.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Speaking it aloud would reveal the absurdity of it, and he preferred the dream.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Men who love themselves hate those who would dim their glory.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“A fool is any man who doesn’t think he’s a fool.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Ignorant people will believe anything if they’re scared enough.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“A man doesn't know his true strength until he fears for his life”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Those who have not lived cannot meditate on the mysteries of life.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Between lovers, betrayal is always the worst sin.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“When he visited the stables he found Spit also had a welcome waiting. It lasted a full two minutes and Master Rensial stated confidently it was the longest fart he had ever heard a horse produce.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Give them the right lie and they’ll believe it.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“It was a curious effect of pain that time became infinite, every instant of agony prolonged to the ultimate.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Vaelin knew himself to be the best swordsman among them. Dentos was master of the bow, Barkus unarmed combat, Nortah the finest rider and Caenis knew the wild like a wolf, but the sword was his.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“War is blood and shit…There’s no honour in it, Makril’s words.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Choice is a lie. The greatest of lies.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“An hour later it had become obvious that as a swordsman Alucius made a fine poet.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“What a burden it is to have an intelligent daughter. It goes against nature for wit to be bound up in so much beauty.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Sellin shrugged. “Times past, brother. Can’t live in ’em. Just learn from ’em.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“A warrior’s song is a lonely tune Full of fire and gone too soon Warriors sing of fallen friends Lost battles and bloody ends…”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Trust is more important than fear.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“I knew a man once,” Al Sorna continued, “who loved a woman very much. But he had a duty to perform, a duty he knew would cost him his life, and hers too if she stayed with him. And so he tricked her and had her taken far away. Sometimes that man tries to cast his thoughts across the ocean, to see if the love they shared has turned to hate, but he finds only distant echoes of her fierce compassion, a life saved here, a kindness done there, like smoke trailing after a blazing torch. And so he wonders, does she hate me? For she has much to forgive, and between lovers,” his gaze switched from her to me, “betrayal is always the worst sin.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Time is as much a delusion as your faith, brother. To look into the void is to see the vastness and smallness of everything at once, in an instant of terror and wonder.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“It is the lessons we learn that change us from boys to men.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“For nine more nights they trained, after an arduous day’s march, Vaelin would try to turn a poet into a swordsman.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“An axe without a blade is just a stick.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“I’ll fight but I won’t murder. His boyhood resolve coming back to him, the promise he had made to himself after saving them in the wild. I’ll kill men who face me in battle but I won’t take the sword to innocents. It felt so hollow now, so naïve.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“Battle is a hard business, sister. Soft training will make for soft soldiers, who will in turn become soft corpses.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“is just a word. You can’t eat it or drink it and yet everywhere I go men talk of it endlessly, and they all tell a different tale of what it actually means. For the Alpirans it’s all about duty, the Renfaelins think it’s the same as courage. In these islands it appears it means killing a son for a crime committed by his father then slaughtering a helpless man when the pantomime fails to go to plan.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“There,” he said, pointing. “We’ll camp on the westward slope. No fires, and it would be greatly appreciated, Baron, if your men refrained from excessive noise.” “I’ll do what I can, my lord. But they’re not peasants, y’know. Can’t just flog them like your lot.” “Maybe you should, milord,” Dentos suggested. “Remind ‘em they bleed the same colour as us peasants.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

“War is never good for commerce. Lest your trading in steel o’course.”
― Anthony Ryan, quote from Blood Song

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Popular quotes

“I know plenty of people who find God most reliably in books, in buildings, and even in other people. I have found God in all of these places too, but the most reliable meeting place for me has always been creation. Since I first became aware of the Divine Presence in that lit-up field in Kansas, I have known where to go when my own flame is guttering. To lie with my back flat on the fragrant ground is to receive a transfusion of the same power that makes the green blade rise. To remember that I am dirt and to dirt I shall return is to be given my life back again, if only for one present moment at a time. Where other people see acreage, timber, soil, and river frontage, I see God's body, or at least as much of it as I am able to see. In the only wisdom I have at my disposal, the Creator does not live apart from creation but spans and suffuses it. When I take a breath, God's Holy Spirit enters me. When a cricket speaks to me, I talk back. Like everything else on earth, I am an embodied soul, who leaps to life when I recognize my kin. If this makes me a pagan, then I am a grateful one.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, quote from Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith

“Dann kam Achill das Vieh. Des Mörders Eintritt in den Tempel, der, als er im Eingang stand, verdunkelt wurde. Was wollte dieser Mensch. Was suchte er bewaffnet hier im Tempel. Grässlichster Augenblick: Ich wusst es schon. Dann lachte er. Jedes Haar auf meinem Kopf stand mir zu Berge, und in die Augen meines Bruders trat der reine Schrecken. Ich warf mich über ihn und wurde weggeschoben wie ein Ding aus Nichts [...] Lachend, alles lachend. Ihm an den Hals griff. An die Kehle ging [...] Des Bruders Augen aus den Höhlen quellend. Und in Achills Gesicht die Lust. Die nackte grässliche männliche Lust [...] Nun hob der Feind, das Monstrum, im Anblick der Apollon-Statue sein Schwert und trennte meines Bruders Kopf vom Rumpf.”
― Christa Wolf, quote from Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays

“International politics is not unlike the jungle: smaller and weaker animals require acute intelligence, sensitive antennae, and nimbleness of footing to assure their own self-preservation; the strong—such as elephants—need pay less attention to ambient conditions and can often do as they wish, and others will get out of the way.”
― Graham E. Fuller, quote from A World Without Islam

“The human mind needs boundaries. Without them it would fall in on itself, like a crushed honeycomb.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Landing

“He taunted me, "Pony boy, pony boy," because I liked ponies. Pony boy. He always came to vent his anger of dragons on me. They must really like us. They hide behind their Wasp Queen and pretend to hate us dragons, but in truth they love us. Why else would they bother with fucking us? That sentence probably turned you off. Thing is, I'm a very vulgar boy.

-Chance Karrucci (the Sweet Dragon)”
― L'Poni Baldwin, quote from Dragons and Cicadas: The Society On Da Run

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