Oathbringer

Quotes

1. “You’re not a monster, Shallan,” Wit whispered. “Oh, child. The world is monstrous at times, and there are those who would have you believe that you are terrible by association.”

   “I am.”

   “No. For you see, it flows the other direction. You are not worse for your association with the world, but it is better for its association with you.”

   p. 791

2. 

   “When has any tyrant ever said to himself, ‘This is enough’?”

   p. 1051

3. 

   Sometimes, a hypocrite is nothing more than a man who is in the process of changing.

   p. 967

4. 

   “Funny, isn’t it, how so many of our stories start the same way, but have opposing endings? In half, the child ignores her parents, wanders out into the woods, and gets eaten. In the other half she discovers great wonders. There aren’t many stories about the kids who say, ‘Yes, I shall not go into the forest. I’m glad my parents explained that is where the monsters live.’”

   p. 790

5. 

   “‘The question,’ she replied, ‘is not whether you will love, hurt, dream, and die. It is what' you will love, why you will hurt, when you will dream, and "how you will die. This is your choice. You cannot pick the destination, only the path.’”

   p. 981

6. 

   “Don’t you care?”

   “About a man I don’t know?” Azure said. “In danger from a threat you can’t define, happening at a time you can’t pinpoint?” She folded her arms. “Forgive me for not sharing in your anxiety.”

   p. 1011

7. 

   That was the coward’s route. Wishing for ignorance.

   p. 824

8. 

   You could not arrive at excellence by the average of these people. Excellence was an individual quest, not a group effort.

   p. 1152

9. 

   Some problems could not be fixed with a lie.

   p. 1084

10. 

    “Be wary,” Shallan whispered, “of anyone who claims to be able to see the future.”

    p. 1084

11. 

    “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

    “I dragged it out back and clubbed it senseless for getting me into the army.”

    p. 929

12. 

    The best indication of what human beings will do is not what they think, but what the record says similar groups have done in the past.

    p. 976

13. 

    “That was rude.”

    “Rudeness doesn’t imply untruth though.”

    p. 944

14. 

    Order was the very substance of rule. If things were organized, control could be asserted.

    p. 972

15. 

    Kaladin had never had much time for art. Either the picture depicted something useful—like a map—or it was basically pointless.

    p. 953

16. 

    All life worked in concert, he’d been taught in his youth. Everything but men, who refused their place. Who destroyed instead of added.

    p. 985

17. 

    It becomes the responsibility of every man, upon realizing he lacks the truth to seek it out.

    p. 1190

18. 

    “I used to take the terrible things that had happened to me,” he said, “as proof that there was no god. Then in some of my darkest moments, I took my life as proof there must be something up there, for only intentional cruelty could offer an explanation.”

    p. 725

19. 

    New recruits might get bored by guard duty, but you’ll never find a veteran complaining about a nice quiet afternoon of not being stabbed.

    p. 974

20. 

    The most important step a man can take. It’s not the first one, is it?

    It’s the next one.

    p. 1133

21. 

    Being a human was about making sense of chaos, finding meaning among the random elements of the world.

    p. 896

22. 

    Who cares what your ancestors did, when the enemy is trying to kill you right now?

    p. 1052

23. 

    “I…don’t feel like I’ve won.…”

    “Welcome to war, Evi,” Dalinar said, heading toward the door. “There are no unequivocal wins. Just victories that leave fewer of your friends dead than others.”

    p. 663

24. 

    She felt like drawing this scene, but knew it was the type of moment she couldn’t capture on a page. It wasn’t about content or composition, but the pleasure of living.

    The trick to happiness wasn’t in freezing every momentary pleasure and clinging to each one, but in ensuring one’s life would produce many future moments to anticipate.

    p. 150

25. 

    “You make it sound like having the power to change the world is a bad thing.”

    “Bad? No. Abhorrent, depressing, ghastly. Having power is a terrible burden, the worst thing imaginable, except for every other alternative.”

    p. 683

26. 

    Most cities lived on the very edge of civilization. Everyone talked about towns and villages out in the middle of nowhere as if they were uncivilized, but she’d found people in those places pleasant, even-tempered, and comfortable with their quieter way of life.

    Not in cities. Cities balanced on the edge of sustainability, always one step from starvation. When you pressed so may people together, their cultures, ideas, and stenches rubbed off on one another. The results wasn’t civilization. It was contained chaos, pressurized, bottled up so it couldn’t escape.

    p. 629

27. 

    Jasnah couldn’t help but smile. For over a decade, she’d dreamed of uniting the best minds of the kingdom in a coordinated effort. She’d been ignored; all anyone had wanted to discuss was her lack of belief in their god. Well, they were focused now. Turned out the end of the world had to actually arrive before people would take it seriously.

    p. 521

28. 

    “Be careful. People who aren’t me are prone to spontaneous bouts of sincerity.”

    “Which is bad?”

    “Of course! ‘Sincerity’ is a word people use to justify their chronic dullness.”

    “Well, I like sincere people,” Shallan said, raising her cup. “It’s delightful how surprised they look when you push them down the stairs.”

    “Now, that’s unkind. You shouldn’t push people down the stairs for being sincere. You push people down the stairs for being stupid.”

    “What if they’re sincere and stupid?”

    “Then you run.”

    p. 680

29. 

    “You can’t civilize war,” Dalinar said. “There’s no painting it up and making it pretty.”

    p. 125

30. 

    “Morality is an axis that doesn’t interest us,” Mraize said calmly. “Only loyalty and power are relevant, for morality is as ephemeral as the changing weather. It depends upon the angle from which you view it.”

    p. 231

31. 

    Dalinar bowed his head for a prayer. Let me be stronger than those who would kill me. Simple and to the point, the kind he figured the Almighty would prefer.

    p. 261

32. 

    His sincerity was so unexpected. Dalinar had been around Alethi politicians so much that he found honesty an obscure thing, like a language he no longer spoke.

    p. 242

33. 

    These are the men…well, these are the men who actually change the world. And they terrify me. For men never see as far as they think they do.

    p. 682

34. 

    “Don’t deflect your evils by pointing out the faults of others,” Shallan said.

    p. 231

35. 

    Taravangian did not believe in any religion, for they were unwieldy things, designed to fill gaps in human understanding with nonsensical explanations, allowing people to sleep well at night, granting them a false sense of comfort and control and preventing them from stretching further for true understanding.

    p. 568

36. 

    You are a man with complicated beliefs, who does not accept everything you are told. You decide how you are defined. Don’t surrender that to them. They will gleefully take the chance to define you, if you allow it.

    p. 401

37. 

    Expensive, yes. But by definition, therefore, not priceless.

    p. 112

38. 

    He needed more than vague explanations and abstract ideas—but those were the very soul of art. If you could explain something perfectly, then you’d never need art. That was the difference between a table and a beautiful woodcutting. You could explain the table: its purpose, its shape, its nature. The woodcutting you simply had to experience.

    p. 295

39. 

    Who would have thought that bearing an ancient, divine mantle of power and honor would involve so many meetings?

    p. 451

40. 

    Oh, Adolin, Shallan thought. He’d arrived at a theory he liked, and now wouldn’t let it go. It was a common mistake warned of in her scientific books.

    p. 159

41. 

    “Falsehoods serve nobody, Kadash,” Dalinar said, pulling back. “If the Almighty is dead, then pretending otherwise is pure stupidity. We need real hope, not faith in lies.”

    p. 178

42. 

    “Child, when they were but babes, I had already lived dozens of lifetimes. ‘Old’ is a word you use for worn shoes. I’m something else entirely.”

    p. 679

43. 

    She didn’t exactly understand what she was doing, but she rarely did. Art wasn’t about understanding, but about knowing.

    p. 98

44. 

    In my painful experience, the truth may be simple, but it is rarely easy.

    p. 503

45. 

    “What’s the point of goals, if not to spur you to something lofty?”

    “Yes, yes. Aim for the sun. That way if you miss, at least your arrow will fall far away, and the person it kills will likely be someone you don’t know.”

    p. 681

46. 

    But you should try to understand what they want out of life, and respect that, rather than projecting onto them what you think they should want out of life.

    p. 366

47. 

    Every army needed someone to run at the front and soak up arrows.

    p. 530

48. 

    It was a frantic, insane brawl for power.

    p. 550

49. 

    An army was the sort of thing everyone wanted to have, so long as it was off doing important things elsewhere.

    p. 722

50. 

    I’d hoped…I’d hoped you could tell me, give me an absolute right. For once, I’d like my moral code not to come with a list of exceptions at the end.

    p. 318

51. 

    “They all stretched farther and farther until they collapsed. In all the history of mankind, has any conqueror decided they had enough? Has any man just said, ‘This is good. This is what I wanted,’ and gone home?”

    p. 213

52. 

    Fine? All right? Now leave me alone. You’re stinking up the place with an air of contented idiocy.

    p. 570

53. 

    Within moments he was roaring his pleasure. Nothing these men did could touch him. He was a destroyer, a conqueror, a glorious maelstrom of death. A god.

    p. 119

54. 

    Morality is not a thing you can simply doff to put on the helm of battle, then put back on when you’re done with the slaughter.

    p. 289

55. 

    “That guy,” a girl’s voice said, “is creepy.”…

    “I mean, old men are all creepy, Lift said. “Seriously. All wrinkly and ‘Hey, want some sweets?’ and ‘Oh, listen to this boring story.’ I’m on to them. They can act nice all they want, but nobody gets old without ruining a whole buncha lives.”

    p. 553

56. 

    “Why, Jasnah? Why have you always denied me?”

    “Other than the fact that you are a detestable buffoon who achieves only the lowest level of mediocrity, as it is the best your limited mind can imagine? I can’t possibly think of a reason.”

    p. 526

57. 

    “Power is a knife,” Wit said, taking his seat. “A terrible, dangerous knife that can’t be wielded without cutting yourself. We joked about stupidity, but in reality most people aren’t stupid. Many are simply frustrated at how little control they have over their lives. They lash out. Sometimes in spectacular ways…”

    p. 683

58. 

    It was gratifying to see how much one could accomplish in both politics and trade by liberally murdering the other fellow’s soldiers.

    p. 659

59. 

    They were too theatrical—and there were too many of them—for all to be truly deranged. This was a fad. A way of dealing with unexpected events and giving some shape to lives that had been turned upside down.

    That didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous. A group of people all trying to impress one another was always more dangerous than the lone psychopath.

    p. 630

60. 

    Politics is involved, Adolin—so by definition it can’t be easy.

    p. 234

61. 

    But merely being tradition does not make some thing worthy, Kadash. We can’t just assume that because some thing is old it is right.

    p. 179

62. 

    Curious, how quickly tyrants grow religious. It must that be convenient to tell yourself that your murders belong to the Almighty instead.

    p. 267

That’s all the quotes.

62 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more