The Hero of Ages (Mistborn, #3)

by Brandon Sanderson

She didn’t fight to protect one man, but to protect the way of life he had created and the people he struggled so hard to defend. That peace gave her strength.

It is too easy for people to characterize Ruin as simply a force of destruction. Think rather of Ruin as intelligent decay. Not merely chaos, but a force that sought in a rational—and dangerous—way to break everything down to its most basic forms. Ruin could plan and carefully plot, knowing if he built one thing up, he could use it to knock down two others. The nature of the world is such that when we create something, we often destroy something else in the process.

“That might be what you do, but that’s not what you are.”

The man spoke with honesty, from his heart. That wasn’t the kind of thing to punish.

The balance between who we wish to be and who we need to be.” He sighed. “But for now,” he said, looking to the canal, “we have to be satisfied with who we are.”

Their belief has brought oppression and violence. What is the good of faith if this is the result? A city full of people misinterpreting their god’s commands? A world of ash and pain and death and sorrow?” Sazed shook his head. “That is why I no longer wear my metalminds. Religions that cannot offer more than this do not deserve to be taught.”

I had to acknowledge that the new person I’m becoming is a valid extension of who I am.

Never let your life depend on the competence of someone whose life isn’t also on the line.

“A man is what he has passion about,” Breeze said. “I’ve found that if you give up what you want most for what you think you should want more, you’ll just end up miserable.”

“Faith,” Spook said, “means that it doesn’t matter what happens. You can trust that somebody is watching. Trust that somebody will make it all right.”

Good men will kill as quickly for what they want as evil men—only the things they want are different.”

Belief isn’t simply a thing for fair times and bright days, I think. What is belief—what is faith—if you don’t continue in it after failure?

For he knew that the winning side wasn’t always the right one.

“That’s what every religion teaches,” Sazed said, frustration mounting. “Yet in each of them I find inconsistencies, logical leaps, and demands of faith I find impossible to accept.” “It sounds to me, young one,” Haddek said, “that you’re searching for something that cannot be found.” “The truth?” Sazed said. “No,” Haddek replied. “A religion that requires no faith of its believers.”

“You are offered proof only once you believe, but if you believe, you can find proof in anything. It is a logical conundrum.” “Faith isn’t about logic, son,”

It wasn’t the grand doctrines or the sweeping ideals that seemed to make believers out of people. It was the simple magic in the world around them. What was it Spook said? Sazed thought, sitting in the shadowy kandra cavern. That faith was about trust. Trusting that somebody was watching. That somebody would make it all right in the end, even though things looked terrible at the moment. To believe, it seemed, one had to want to believe. It was a conundrum, one Sazed had wrestled with. He wanted someone, something, to force him to have faith. He wanted to have to believe because of the proof shown to him.

Some important decisions were made in public, on a battlefield or in a conference room. But others happened quietly, unseen by others. That didn’t make the decision any less important to Sazed. He would believe. Not because something had been proven to him beyond his ability to deny. But because he chose to.

He was more and more determined to follow the Terris religion—not because it was perfect, but because he would rather believe and have hope.

She would always love him. But she would not cease to function because he was gone.

He knew he needed something of both Preservation and Ruin. Something that could both protect and destroy. Something that could destroy to protect.

Every religion had clues in it, for the faiths of men contained the hopes, loves, wishes, and lives of the people who had believed them.

The religions in my portfolio weren’t useless after all, he thought, the power flowing from him and remaking the world. None of them were. Not one had the whole truth. But they all had truth.