The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1)

by Brandon Sanderson

“There are two kinds of people in this world, son,” his father said sternly. “Those who save lives. And those who take lives.” “And what of those who protect and defend? The ones who save lives by taking lives?” His father snorted. “That’s like trying to stop a storm by blowing harder. Ridiculous. You can’t protect by killing.”

The means by which we achieve victory are as important as the victory itself.”

I once saw a spindly man carrying a stone larger than his head upon his back, the passage went. He stumbled beneath the weight, shirtless under the sun, wearing only a loincloth. He tottered down a busy thoroughfare. People made way for him. Not because they sympathized with him, but because they feared the momentum of his steps. You dare not impede one such as this. The monarch is like this man, stumbling along, the weight of a kingdom on his shoulders. Many give way before him, but so few are willing to step in and help carry the stone. They do not wish to attach themselves to the work, lest they condemn themselves to a life full of extra burdens. I left my carriage that day and took up the stone, lifting it for the man. I believe my guards were embarrassed. One can ignore a poor shirtless wretch doing such labor, but none ignore a king sharing the load. Perhaps we should switch places more often. If a king is seen to assume the burden of the poorest of men, perhaps there will be those who will help him with his own load, so invisible, yet so daunting.

“You all act differently and think differently. Nothing else is like that—animals act alike, and all spren are, in a sense, virtually the same individual. There’s harmony in that. But not in you—it seems that no two of you can agree on anything. All the world does as it is supposed to, except for humans. Maybe that’s why you so often want to kill each other.”

A man’s emotions are what define him, and control is the hallmark of true strength. To lack feeling is to be dead, but to act on every feeling is to be a child.”

The lad was a genius with the Blade, an artist with paint of only one shade.

“Ignorance may reside in a man hiding from intelligence, but scholarship can seem ignorance hidden behind intelligence.”

To be young is about action. To be a scholar is about informed action.”

Books can store information better than we can—what we do that books cannot is interpret.

praise should be honest, but it should never be withheld.

‘Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.’

Death is the destination. But the journey, that is life. That is what matters.

“I would say an excuse is something you claim, but do not believe, Nak-ali.” Hatham was using the high form of Au-nak’s name. “While a justification is something you actually believe.”

“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon. Too often, we forget that.”

“When you can make the music sing back at you, then you’ve mastered it.”

no accomplishment has substance nearly as great as the road used to achieve it. We are not creatures of destinations. It is the journey that shapes us. Our callused feet, our backs strong from carrying the weight of our travels, our eyes open with the fresh delight of experiences lived.

For the substance of our existence is not in the achievement, but in the method.

At times, it seems to me that to be human is to want that which we cannot have.

he felt as if the entire world had somehow become more right for having gone wrong.

“It strikes me that religion—in its essence—seeks to take natural events and ascribe supernatural causes to them. I, however, seek to take supernatural events and find the natural meanings behind them. Perhaps that is the final dividing line between science and religion. Opposite sides of a card.”