Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive, #3)

by Brandon Sanderson

The trick to happiness wasn’t in freezing every momentary pleasure and clinging to each one, but in ensuring one’s life would produce many future moments to anticipate.

“But sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a person who is in the process of changing.”

And then there’s the matter of Drehy…” “What matter?” “Well, he’s been courting a man, you see…” Kaladin threw on his coat, chuckling. “I did know about that one. You only now noticed?”

“They will try,” Jasnah said, “to define you by something you are not. Don’t let them. I can be a scholar, a woman, a historian, a Radiant. People will still try to classify me by the thing that makes me an outsider. They want, ironically, the thing I don’t do or believe to be the prime marker of my identity. I have always rejected that, and will continue to do so.”

“It’s feminine,” Drehy added. “Drehy,” Kaladin said, “you are literally courting a man.” “So?” Drehy said. “Yeah, what are you saying, Kal?” Skar snapped. “Nothing! I just thought Drehy might empathize.…” “That’s hardly fair,” Drehy said. “Yeah,” Lopen added. “Drehy likes other guys. That’s like … he wants to be even less around women than the rest of us. It’s the opposite of feminine. He is, you could say, extra manly.”

You mostly failed. This is life. The longer you live, the more you fail. Failure is the mark of a life well lived. In turn, the only way to live without failure is to be of no use to anyone.

The world doesn’t make sense, Kal thought. His father, the consummate surgeon, told him to avoid getting too wrapped up in his patients’ emotions. And here was a career killer, telling him to care?

‘The question,’ she replied, ‘is not whether you will love, hurt, dream, and die. It is what you will love, why you will hurt, when you will dream, and how you will die. This is your choice. You cannot pick the destination, only the path.’ ”

The most important step a man can take. It’s not the first one, is it? It’s the next one. Always the next step, Dalinar.

“I will take responsibility for what I have done,” Dalinar whispered. “If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man.”

“Ten spears go to battle,” he whispered, “and nine shatter. Did that war forge the one that remained? No, Amaram. All the war did was identify the spear that would not break.”

The ancient code of the Knights Radiant says “journey before destination.” Some may call it a simple platitude, but it is far more. A journey will have pain and failure. It is not only the steps forward that we must accept. It is the stumbles. The trials. The knowledge that we will fail. That we will hurt those around us. But if we stop, if we accept the person we are when we fall, the journey ends. That failure becomes our destination.