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cowardice is the worst betrayal of the gift of freedom. For a man who runs from battle is a slave to his fear.”
A man who asks for advice is either indulging in the pretence of consideration or too weak to know his own mind.
It’s always the way with great men, they can’t see the knives of those who live in their shadow.”
You think me cruel, but what do you know of true cruelty? Is the tiger cruel when it takes the antelope? Or the red shark when it claims the whale? Was your mad king cruel when he sent you off to fight your hopeless war? You mistake purpose for cruelty, and I have always had a purpose. I am not mindless.
“Mercy is the sweetest wine and the bitterest wormwood,” Eliss, the mother, said. “For it rewards the merciful and shames the guilty.”
Divinity retains the appearance of insight,’” she read one evening, brows creased with a deep frown. “‘When in reality it celebrates ignorance. Its tenets are so much clay, and when the clay sets, it becomes dogma.’”
Nobility is a lie, her father had once told her. A pretence that high standing comes from anything more than money or martial prowess. Any dolt can play the noble, and as you’ll discover in time, daughter, it’s mostly dolts who do.
Deception is a matter of expectation, the priest had told her once. People do not question what they expect to see. Only the unusual draws the eye.
Deceit,’” she said to the Reader, “‘is the hardest sin to divine, for many a lie is spoken in kindness, and many a truth in cruelty.’”
“Is a lie really a lie if it is honestly believed? Your people sought to make sense of the world’s many mysteries with their Faith. Misguided perhaps, but based on a truth not fully revealed.”
“What is broken remains so. It is the way of things.”
“Beware the seduction of the quick conclusion. Do not indulge in the answer you desire until you know all you need to know.”
We are not them and they are not us. They serve, we command and in commanding serve them in turn.
