R. Scott Bakker

Quotes

1. Duty measures the distance between the animal and the divine.

2. 

   Men never resemble one another so much as when asleep or dead.

3. 

   Though you lose your soul, you shall win the world.

4. 

   The Poet will yield up his stylus only when the Geometer can explain how Life can at once be a point and a line. How can all time, all creation, come to the now? Make no mistake: this moment, the instant of this very breath, is the frail thread from which all creation hangs.

   That men dare to be thoughtless ...

5. 

   It is the difference in knowledge that commands respect. This is why the true test of every student lies in the humiliation of his master.

6. 

   What vengeance is this? That he should slumber while I endure? Blood douses no hatred, cleanses no sin. Like seed, it spills of its own volition, and leaves naught but sorrow in its wake.

7. 

   Love is lust made meaningful. Hope is hunger made human.

8. 

   All men are greater than dead men.

9. 

   When shields become crutches, and swords become canes,

   some hearts are put to rout.

   When wives become plunder, and foes become thanes,

   all hope has guttered out.

10. 

    Where the holy take men for fools, the mad take the world.

11. 

    Men are forever pointing at others, which is why I always follow the knuckle and not the nail.

12. 

    One can look into the future, or one can look at the future. The latter is by far the more instructive.