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He couldn’t give in to assuming he was cursed, or had bad luck, or whatever it was. Superstition never got a man anywhere. But he had to admit, the pattern was disturbing. If he acted as he always had before, how could he expect different results? He had to try something new. Change, somehow. This was going to take more thought.

“Who’s put these ideas in your head? Why would you want to learn to hit other boys with a stick?”

“For honor, father,” Kal said. “Who tells stories about surgeons, for the Heralds’s sake!”

“The children of the men and women whose lives we save,” Lirin said evenly, meeting Kal’s gaze. “That’s who tell stories of surgeons.”

But you always find people telling stories about supposedly better days. You watch. A man joins a new team of soldiers, and the first thing he’ll do is talk about how wonderful his old team was. We remember the good times and the bad ones, forgetting that most times are neither good nor bad. They just are.

Men were not in command of their own religious paths; the priests control the doctrine, and few members of the Church were allowed to know theology. They were taught to follow the priests. Not the Almighty or the Heralds, but the priests.

“The purpose of youth is to experience variety while it is still interesting.” She glanced at Dalinar. “It isn’t until we get older that we should be forced to be boring.”

Proof that one can be both intelligent and accept the intelligence of those who disagree with you? Why, I should think it would undermine the scholarly world in its entirety.

The ardents who passed through town were careful to explain that the Calling of a farmer was a noble one, one of the highest save for the Calling of a soldier. Kal’s father whispered under his breath that he saw far more honor in feeding the kingdom than he did in fighting and dying in useless wars.

Bitterness is repaid more often than kindness. One of his father’s sayings.

“Stories and legends, Teft,” Kaladin said. “We want to believe that there were better men once. That makes us think it could be that way again. But people don’t change. They are corrupt now. They were corrupt then.”

I shouldn’t be so hard on our neighbors. They’re petty, yes, but it’s the pettiness of the ignorant. I’m not disgusted by them. I’m disgusted by the one who manipulates them.

Art was about creation. That was its soul, its essence. Creation and order. You took something disorganized—a splash of ink, an empty page—and you built something from it. Something from nothing. The soul of creation.

“I was thinking philosophy,” Jasnah said.

Shallan blinked. “Philosophy? What good is that?” Isn’t it the art of saying nothing with as many words as possible?

“Philosophy is an important field of study,” Jasnah said sternly. “Particularly if you’re going to be involved in court politics. The nature of morality must be considered, and preferably before one is exposed to situations where a moral decision is required.”