Quotes from The First Law Trilogy

“Doing better next time. That’s what life is.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from The First Law Trilogy

“A few glasses of wine can be the difference between finding a man a hilarious companion or an insufferable moron.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from The First Law Trilogy

“But some things have to be done. It’s better to do them, than to live with the fear of them.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from The First Law Trilogy

“lies. The hardest kind to see through. The kind you tell yourself.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from The First Law Trilogy

“Come,” he whispered. They all were welcome.
They scattered for the racks, seizing their spiked swords, and their sharp axes, and the Bloody-Nine laughed to watch them. Armed or not, their death was a thing already decided. It was written into the cavern in lines of fire and lines of shadow. Now he would write it in lines of blood. “Die!” he roared, and the blade made circles, savage and beautiful, the letter on the metal burning red and leaving bright trails behind. And where the circles passed everything would be made right. The Shanka would scream and gibber, and the pieces of them would scatter, and they would be sliced and divided as neatly as meat on the butcher’s block
The Bloody-Nine showed his teeth, and smiled to be free, and to see the good work done so well. He knocked a barbed sword from a Flathead’s hand, seized it by the scruff of the neck and forced its face down into the channel where the molten steel flowed, furious yellow, and its head hissed and bubbled, shooting out stinking steam.
“Burn!” laughed the Bloody-Nine, and the ruined corpses, and their gaping wounds, and their fallen weapons, and the boiling bright iron laughed with him.
Only the Shanka did not laugh. They knew their hour was come.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from The First Law Trilogy

“More often than not bad luck meant bad plans.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from The First Law Trilogy

“Sand dan Glokta, shield to the helpless. Is it ever too late to be . . . a good man?”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from The First Law Trilogy

“The blade itself incites to deeds of violence’ Homer”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from The First Law Trilogy

“There are few ills a good cup of tea won’t help with.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from The First Law Trilogy

“He had discovered early in his military career that if one has an effective and experienced officer above, coupled with effective and experienced soldiers below, one need do, and know, nothing.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from The First Law Trilogy

“Nothing to it. You treat folk the way you’d want to be treated, and you can’t go far wrong.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from The First Law Trilogy

“The best lessons one teaches oneself.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from The First Law Trilogy

“Perhaps we’ll have some answers, at least, before the end. I always dreamed of dying well-informed.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from The First Law Trilogy

“You don’t pick your family, you take what you’re given and you make the best of it.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from The First Law Trilogy

“She tipped back her head and swilled down the last of her wine. ‘Having fucked the groom is really no excuse for missing a wedding, you know.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from The First Law Trilogy

“Anyone can face ease and success with confidence. It is the way we face trouble and misfortune that defines us. Self-pity goes with selfishness, and there is nothing more to be deplored in a leader than that. Selfishness belongs to children, and to halfwits. A great leader puts others before himself. You would be surprised how acting so makes it easier to bear one’s own troubles. In order to act like a king, one need only treat everyone else like one.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from The First Law Trilogy

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Popular quotes

“I think knowledge is a blessing, not a curse. This is especially true in the case of genetic knowledge. To understand the molecular nature of cancer for the first time, to diagnose and prevent Alzheimer’s disease, to discover the secrets of human history, to reconstruct the organisms that populated the pre-Cambrian seas – these seem to me to be immense blessings.”
― Matt Ridley, quote from Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

“Not one day in anyone’s life is an uneventful day, no day without profound meaning, no matter how dull and boring it might seem, no matter whether you are a seamstress or a queen, a shoeshine boy, or a movie star, a renowned philosopher or a Down’s-syndrome child. Because in every day of your life, there are opportunities to perform little kindnesses for others, both by conscious acts of will and unconscious example. Each smallest act of kindness—even just words of hope when they are needed, the remembrance of a birthday, a compliment that engenders a smile—reverberates across great distances and spans of time, affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo, because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’s passed, until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage years later and far away. Likewise, each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act, regardless of how petty, can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, poisoning people whom you have never met and never will. All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined—those dead, those living, those generations yet to come—that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands. Therefore, after every failure, we are obliged to strive again for success, and when faced with the end of one thing, we must build something new and better in the ashes, just as from pain and grief, we must weave hope, for each of us is a thread critical to the strength—to the very survival of the human tapestry. Every hour in every life contains such often-unrecognized potential to affect the world that the great days and thrilling possibilities are combined always in this momentous day.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from From the Corner of His Eye

“the brilliant book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman describes seven key abilities most beneficial for human beings: the ability to motivate ourselves, to persist against frustration, to delay gratification, to regulate moods, to hope, to empathize, and to control impulse. Many of those who commit violence never learned these skills. If you know a young person who lacks them all, that’s an important pre-incident indicator, and he needs help.”
― Gavin de Becker, quote from The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

“I wasn't enjoying the conversation that much. I didn't want to prolong it. It is the sort of man-to-woman infight that I try whenever possible to ascribe to premenstrual tension. I like the theory, but unfortunately in this case I happened to know that it didn't account for Klara, and of course it leaves unresolved at any time the question of how to account for me.”
― Frederik Pohl, quote from Gateway

“Bakın şimdi: Bedenin temel kısmı, iyi, evcilleştirilmiş popo temeldir; bu yüzden eylem popodan başlar. Ayrı ayrı kısımların dalları tıpkı bir ağaç gövdesinden çıkar gibi popodan ayak parmağı, eller, gözler, dişler kulaklar olarak çıkıp dal dal dağılırlarken bazı kısımlar, hassas ve mahir işlemeler sayesinde, hafiften diğerlerin içine geçerler. Küçük Polonya Vilayeti'nde "papa" da denilen insan yüzü ise taçtır; poponun gövdesinden ayrı ayrı parçalar halinde büyüyen ağacın yapraklı kısmıdır; demek ki popo tarafından başlatılmış döngüyü papa kapatır. "Papa"ya vardıktan sonra bana, onlar üzerinden yeniden popoya varmak için ayrı ayrı parçalara dönmek kalmıyorsa eğer, ne kalıyor?”
― Witold Gombrowicz, quote from Ferdydurke

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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.