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January 25 - February 3, 2020
“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 just do what’s right anyway.”
“Yes, well,” Elend said, “I kind of lost track of time….” “For two hours?” Elend nodded sheepishly. “There were books involved.”
“That’s actually how most rulership works,” Ham mused. “What is a government but an institutionalized method of making sure somebody else does all the work?”
A man can only lead when others accept him as their leader, and he has only as much authority as his subjects give to him. All of the brilliant ideas in the world cannot save your kingdom if no one will listen to them.”
“They’ve had to grow,” Vin said. “They can’t be the men they once were, not with this much responsibility.”
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.”
He found insanity no excuse, however, for irrational behavior. Some men were blind, others had poor tempers. Still
others heard voices. It was all the same, in the end. A man was defined not by his flaws, but by how he overcame them.
You don’t have to spend your years mistrusting, staying in the shadows and keeping yourself apart.”
What if he was imagining connections that didn’t exist? Every scholar knew that one of the greatest dangers in research was the desire to find a specific answer.
Vin could hear a rhythm that nobody else could. Nobody except a man a thousand years dead.
Don’t worry that you aren’t giving people what they want. Give them who you are, and let that be enough.”
Regardless, I still do not believe that your duty is to do as the people wish. Your duty is to lead as best you can, following the dictates of your conscience. You must be true, Your Majesty, to the man you wish to become. If that man is not whom the people wish to have lead them, then they will choose someone else.”
Priests shouldn’t be cheerful.
A man can only stumble for so long before he either falls or stands up straight.”
“Sometimes, people only seem determined upon one course because they have been offered no other options.”
“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.”
Love must be allowed to flow both ways—if it is not, then it is not truly love, I think. It is something else. Infatuation, perhaps? Either way, 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.”
“And if I’m wrong for him?” Vin asked. “You must love him enough to trust his wishes, even if you disagree with them. You must respect him—no matter how wrong you think he may be, no matter how poor you think his decisions, you must respect his desire to make them. Even if one of them includes loving you.”
“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 sees that both lock and key were created for the same purpose.”
Those who take lightly promises they make to those they love are people who find little lasting satisfaction in life.
And yet, he was finding more and more that he didn’t want to take his mind off her. Which was more potent? The pain of memory, or the pain of forgetting?
