Wind and Truth (The Stormlight Archive, #5)

by Brandon Sanderson

“You think that kid who starved didn’t want to eat? You think her parents didn’t want to escape the ravages of war badly enough? You think if they’d had more Passion, the cosmere would have saved them? How convenient to believe that people are poor because they didn’t care enough about being rich. That they just didn’t pray hard enough. So convenient to make suffering their own fault, rather than life being unfair and birth mattering more than aptitude. Or storming Passion.”

“A virtue is something that is valuable even if it gives you nothing. A virtue persists without payment or compensation. Positive thinking is great. Vital. Useful. But it has to remain so even if it gets you nothing. Belief, truth, honor … if these exist only to get you something, you’ve missed the storming point.”

If hope doesn’t mean anything to you when you lose, then it wasn’t ever a virtue in the first place. It took me a long time to learn that, and I finally did so from the writings of a man who lost every belief he thought he had, then started over new.” “Sounds like someone wise,” Syl said. “Oh, Sazed is among the best. Hope I get to meet him someday.”

“You know what first drew me to you, Kaladin?” Wit asked. “You did one of the most difficult things a man can do: you gave yourself a second chance.”

“What about winter makes one cough?” Dalinar asked. “Oh, right,” Wit said. “Roshar. No common cold. You have no idea how wonderful life is here, do you?” “Are there places worse than the one being threatened with utter domination by a dark, destructive god?” “You’d be surprised,” Wit said. “A few have political fundraisers.”

“The thing is, the deepest truths always sound a little trite. Because we all know them, and feel foolish being reminded.”