Falls the Shadow

Men kill for many reasons, they steal but for one-greed.

In my life, I've been both the besieged and the besieged, and I know damned well which I prefer!

Troubles may ofttimes be so dire that they cannot get better. But they are never so dire that they still cannot get worse.

His was a lonely, unorthodox conviction that war was man's ultimate failure.

He was too astute a politician, too ambitious a Prince, to confuse friendship with statecraft.

But in all honesty, I do not find it so peculiar a notion, that a Welshman should rule Wales.

Simon said nothing, thinking of all the good men who’d died because this inept, faithless fool had been born a King’s son.

You must try to understand, my dearest one. It was not treason, was but a dream bred before its time, that the King should not be accountable only to God. No mortal man ought to be entrusted with power such as that, for any king’s son may be born a fool.

for each age interprets the past in the light of its own biases.

What is a thing worth, if it comes with no risk?

I asked Simon if he’d ever feared that all our struggles, all our suffering might be in vain. Not a priest’s question, and he shamed me by his answer, by the shining certainty of his faith. He said no, my lady, and then he told me of a cave he’d found whilst in the Holy Land. It was said to have magical powers; a man could shout and long after it had died away, it echoed back as if from the very bowels of the earth. Simon had so marveled at it that he’d never forgotten it. And that night in Hereford Castle, he said that whilst it might seem as if we were but shouting into the wind, our echoes, too, would come back in time, echoes to hearten the godly and haunt kings. He laughed then, but he believed it, my lady, and I found I believed, too.

He could not change his nature, could not help being cautious, deliberate, introspective, not traits to be scorned by any means, but traits that seemed dull, bland—even to him—when compared with Davydd’s hell-for-leather dazzle.

That may be infidel wisdom, but it is wisdom all the same.

Henry did not lack for physical courage; his was a moral cowardice.

A man just realizing the fatal extent of his own folly was not likely to be all that rational.

Mayhap not, but a king ought to be far-sighted enough to realize that if reforms are inevitable, better he be the one to carry them out.

But such was her faith in Simon that it colored her faith in God; unable to conceive of defeat, she never doubted that the Lord, too, willed Simon to win, and falling asleep in Simon’s arms, she did not dread the morrow, so secure was she in the strength of her yesterdays.

If, like the Romans, he must make a desert and call it peace, so be it.

Edward Plantagenet is no man to hold cheaply. Far better to take him at his own inflated estimation!