Quotes from Sword Song

“Love is a dangerous thing. It comes in disguise to change our life... Lust is the deceiver. Lust wrenches our lives until nothing matters except the one we think we love, and under that deceptive spell we kill for them, give all for them, and then, when we have what we have wanted, we discover that it is all an illusion and nothing is there. Lust is a voyage to nowhere, to an empty land, but some men just love such voyages and never care about the destination. Love is a voyage too, a voyage with no destination except death, but a voyage of bliss.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“Priests come to my home beside the northern sea where they find an old man, and they tell me I am just a few paces from the fires of hell. I only need repent, they say, and I will go to heaven and live forevermore in the blessed company of the saints.

And I would rather burn till time itself burns out.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“Os guerreiros defendem o lar, defendem as crianças, defendem as mulheres, defendem a colheita e matam os inimigos que vêm roubar essas coisas. Sem guerreiros a terra seria um lugar devastado, desolado e repleto de lamentos. No entanto, a verdadeira recompensa de um guerreiro não é a prata e o ouro que ele pode ganhar nos braços, e sim a reputação, e é por isso que existem poetas.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“E fiquei olhando para aquela costa, sabendo que o destino iria me trazer de volta, e toquei o punho de Bafo de Serpente, porque a espada também tinha um destino e eu sabia que ela voltaria a este local. Este era um local para minha espada cantar.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“Toquei Bafo de Serpente de novo e me pareceu que ela teve um tremor. Algumas vezes eu achava que a espada cantava. Era um canto fino, apenas entreouvido, um som penetrante, a canção da espada que desejava sangue; a canção da espada.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“E enquanto houver um reino nesta ilha varrida pelo vento, haverá guerra. Portanto não podemos nos encolher para longe da guerra. Não podemos nos esconder de sua crueldade, de seu sangue, do fedor, da malignidade ou do júbilo, porque a guerra virá para nós, desejemos ou não. Guerra é destino, e o destino é inexorável.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“The Lord Uhtred sought to annoy you, bishop," the king said, "and it is best not to give him the satisfaction of showing that he has succeeded.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“Um país é a sua história, bispo; a soma de todas as suas histórias. Somos o que nossos pais fizeram de nós, suas vitórias nos deram o que temos.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“It is hard to force obedience,” he said, “without encouraging resentment.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“To be discreet, ‘”he looked up to glare at Æthelflaed, “‘chaste! Keepers of the home! Good! Obedient to their husbands!’ Those are God’s own words! That is what God demands of a woman! To be discreet, to be chaste, to be home-keepers, to be obedient! God spoke to us!”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“I had thought about Alban for a while. “Why,” I had then asked, “if your god can pull out a man’s eyes, didn’t he just save Alban’s life?” “Because God chose not to, of course!” Beocca had answered sniffily, which is just the kind of answer you always get when you ask a Christian priest to explain another inexplicable act of their god.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“Love is a voyage too, a voyage with no destination except death, but a voyage of bliss.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“Você nunca, nunca deve contar seus crimes aos outros, a não ser que sejam tão grandes a ponto de não poderem ficar escondidos, e nesse caso descreva-os como política ou ação de Estado.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“Instead he was summoning his last tension, like a bowman drawing the cord of a hunting bow an extra inch to give the arrow deadly force, then Steapa howled like an animal and charged. Weland charged too and they met like stags in the rutting season. The Danes and Norsemen had crowded around, making a circle that was limited by the spears of Sigefrid’s bodyguard, and the watching warriors gave”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“Have you heard a cuckoo yet?” I asked Steapa. “Not yet.” “It’s time to go,” I said, “unless you want to kill me?” “Maybe later,” Steapa said, “but for the moment I’ll fight beside you.” And”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“It might have been a moment or an hour. To this day I do not know. I listen to my poets sing of age-old fights and I think no, it was not like that, and certainly that fight aboard Haesten's ship was nothing like the version my poets warble. It was not heroic and grand, and it was not a lord of war giving out death with unstoppable sword-skill. It was panic. It was abject fear. It was men shitting themselves with fright, men pissing, men bleeding, men grimacing and men crying as pathetically as whipped children. It was a chaos of flying blades, of shields breaking, of half-caught glimpses, of despairing parries and blind lunges. Feet slipped on blood and the dead lay with curling hands and the injured clutched awful wounds that would kill them and they cried for their mothers and the gulls cried, and all that the poets celebrate, because that is their job. They make it sound marvelous. And the wind blew soft across the flooding tide that filled Beamfleot's creek with swirling water in which the new-shed blood twisted and faded, faded and twisted, until the cold green sea diluted it.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“He(Erkenwald) shuddered suddenly. “That is what you do, Lord Uhtred! You beat a child into obedience! A child learns by suffering pain, by being beaten, and that pregnant child must learn her duty. God wills it! Praise God!”

I heard only last week that they want to make Erkenwald into a saint. Priests come to my
home beside the northern sea where they find an old man, and they tell me I am just a few
paces from the fires of hell. I only need repent, they say, and I will go to heaven and live for
evermore in the blessed company of the saints.

And I would rather burn till time itself burns out.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“(Erkanwald) “That is what you do, Lord Uhtred! You beat a child into obedience! A child learns by suffering pain, by being beaten, and that pregnant child must learn her duty. God wills it! Praise God!”

I heard only last week that they want to make Erkenwald into a saint. Priests come to my home beside the northern sea where they find an old man, and they tell me I am just a few
paces from the fires of hell. I only need repent, they say, and I will go to heaven and live for
evermore in the blessed company of the saints.

And I would rather burn till time itself burns out.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“(Erkanwald) “That is what you do, Lord Uhtred! You beat a child into obedience! A child learns by suffering pain, by being beaten, and that pregnant child must learn her duty. God wills it! Praise God!”

I heard only last week that they want to make Erkenwald into a saint. Priests come to my home beside the northern sea where they find an old man, and they tell me I am just a few paces from the fires of hell. I only need repent, they say, and I will go to heaven and live for evermore in the blessed company of the saints.

And I would rather burn till time itself burns out.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“I heard only last week that they want to make Erkenwald into a saint. Priests come to my home beside the northern sea where they find an old man, and they tell me I am just a few paces from the fires of hell. I only need repent, they say, and I will go to heaven and live for evermore in the blessed company of the saints.

And I would rather burn till time itself burns out.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“And I must be nineteen by now, lord! Maybe even twenty?” “Eighteen?” I suggested. “I could have been married four years ago, lord!” We”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“I could hardly see him in the darkness, but knew he wore a leather jerkin and had a sword at his side. The rest of us were in leather and mail, had helmets, and carried shields, axes, swords, or spears. Tonight we would kill. Sihtric,”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“And when you speak with him,” I said, “tell him to stop hitting his wife.” Erkenwald jerked as though I had just struck him in the face. “It is his Christian duty,” he said stiffly, “to discipline his wife, and it is her duty to submit. Did you not listen to what I preached?”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“I heard only last week that they want to make Erkenwald into a saint. Priests come to my home beside the northern sea where they find an old man, and they tell me I am just a few paces from the fires of hell. I only need repent, they say, and I will go to heaven and live for evermore in the blessed company of the saints. And I would rather burn till time itself burns out.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“I am old now. So old. My sight fades, my muscles are weak, my piss dribbles, my bones ache, and I sit in the sun and fall asleep to wake tired.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“Who summons the dead man?” she asked. “A fresh corpse,” Æthelwold said. “A fresh corpse?” I asked. “Someone must be sent to the world of the dead,” he explained, as though it were obvious, “to find Bjorn and bring him back.” “So they kill someone?” Gisela asked. “How else can they send a messenger to the dead?” Æthelwold asked pugnaciously.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“their bricks and I thought how the world had once been filled with these houses. I remember the first time I ever climbed a Roman staircase, and how odd it felt, and I knew that in times gone by men must have taken such things for granted. Now the world was dung and straw and damp-ridden wood. We had stone masons, of course, but it was quicker to build from wood, and the wood rotted, but no one seemed to care.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“There’s plenty of food here,” Erik said dismissively. “We have fish traps and eel traps, we net wildfowl and eat well. And the prospect of silver and gold buys a lot of wheat, barley, oats, meat, fish, and ale.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“houses. I remember the first time I ever climbed a Roman staircase, and how odd it felt, and I knew that in times gone by men must have taken such things for granted. Now the world was dung and straw and damp-ridden wood. We had stone masons, of course, but it was quicker to build from wood, and the wood rotted, but no one seemed to care. The whole”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

“world rotted as we slid from light into darkness, getting ever nearer to the black chaos in which this middle world would end and the gods would fight and all love and light and laughter would dissolve.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Sword Song

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