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When you struggle so hard for life, you grow strong—but you can grow harsh too.
“You, Elend Venture, are a good man. A truly good man.” “Good men don’t become legends,” he said quietly. “Good men don’t need to become legends.” She opened her eyes, looking up at him. “They simply do what’s right anyway.”
She fell with her eyes closed, remembering her first few weeks in the mist, training beneath Kelsier’s relaxed—yet watchful—tutelage. He had given her this. Freedom. Despite two years as a Mistborn, she had never lost the sense of intoxicating wonder she felt when soaring through the mists.
He nodded slowly. “Why do you play their games?” “Whose games?” The Watcher gestured into the mists, toward Keep Venture. “Those aren’t games,” Vin said. “It’s no game when the people I love are in danger.”
Ham chuckled. “We really have to do something about your ambivalence toward civic duty, kid.” “I already overthrew one government,” Vin said. “I figure that takes care of my ‘civic duty’ for a while.”
Just as a beautiful woman demanded attention by virtue of her face and figure, Breeze drew it by near unconscious use of his powers.
You don’t know what I do for mankind, he had said. I was your god, even if you couldn’t see it. By killing me, you have doomed yourselves. Those were the Lord Ruler’s last words, spoken as he lay dying on the floor of his own throne room. They worried her. Chilled her, even still.
“My dear man,” Breeze noted. “When you told us you needed to ‘go and gather a few important references,’ you might have warned us that you were planning to be gone for so long.” “Yes, well,” Elend said, “I kind of lost track of time.” “For two hours?” Elend nodded sheepishly. “There were books involved.”
Unapplied knowledge benefited no one.
“Then what does? What do you think makes a man a good king, Tindwyl of Terris?” “Trust,” Tindwyl said, looking him in the eyes. “A good king is one who is trusted by his people—and one who deserves that trust.”
That was one nice thing about books and notes: Those could always wait for another time.
A man was defined not by his flaws, but by how he overcame them.
“Arrogance, Your Majesty,” Tindwyl said. “Successful leaders all share one common trait—they believe that they can do a better job than the alternatives. Humility is fine when considering your responsibility and duty, but when it comes time to make a decision, you must not question yourself.”
“Vin isn’t … like other women.” Tindwyl raised an eyebrow, her voice softening slightly. “I think that the more women you come to know, Your Majesty, the more you’ll find that statement applies to all of them.”
Don’t worry that you aren’t giving people what they want. Give them who you are, and let that be enough.”
“Sometimes people only seem determined upon one course because they have been offered no other options.”
“Cannot a human man love his father, yet not believe he is a good person?”
“It is not my position to judge truth, Lord Venture,” Sazed said, smiling. “I simply carry it.”
There are two ways to stay safe, Reen’s voice whispered to her. Either be so quiet and harmless that people ignore you, or be so dangerous that they’re terrified of you.
“How can you teach the people to look toward the gods of the dead, Sazed? Those religions did their people little good, and their prophecies are now dust.” “Religions are an expression of hope,” Sazed said. “That hope gives people strength.”
“Religions are promises—promises that there is something watching over us, guiding us. Prophecies, therefore, are natural extensions of the hopes and desires of the people. Not foolishness at all.”
“Don’t you see? Hope is a good thing—a wonderful thing—but you must have hope in something appropriate. If you perpetuate the dreams of the past, then you stifle your own dreams of the future.”
Love must be allowed to flow both ways—if it does not, then it is not truly love, I think. It is something else. Infatuation, perhaps? In any case, there are some of us who are far too quick to make martyrs of ourselves. We stand at the side, watching, thinking that we do the right thing by inaction. We fear pain—our own or that of another.”
“At first glance, the key and the lock it fits may seem very different,” Sazed said. “Different in shape, different in function, different in design. The man who looks at them without knowledge of their true nature might think them opposites, for one is meant to open, and the other to keep closed. Yet upon closer examination, he might see that without one, the other becomes useless. The wise man then knows that both lock and key were created for the same purpose.”
He didn’t like the way cloaks rubbed against the small point of the spike that stuck out of his back between his shoulder blades. The head was against his sternum, and couldn’t be seen beneath clothing.
Those who take lightly promises they make to those they love are people who find little lasting satisfaction in life.
Yet whom did he thank for that blessing, and whom did he curse for stealing her away? He knew of hundreds of gods. He would hate them all, if he thought it would do any good.
Which was more potent? The pain of memory, or the pain of forgetting? He was a Keeper—it was his life’s work to remember. Forgetting, even in the name of personal peace, was not something that appealed to him.
