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“I am death,” she began again, in a strange-sounding voice. “Everyone who encounters me dies.”
It isn’t the evil and indecent who are flung down into the depths, no! Oh, no! The evil and decisive fling down those who are moral, honest and noble but maladroit, hesitant and full of scruples.”
Mamma, are they demons? Is it the Wild Hunt? Phantoms from hell? Mamma, mamma! Quiet, quiet, children. They are not demons, not devils… Worse than that. They are people.
But it was not possible. No one could have seen it. The cottage was well concealed amidst the marshes. In a wilderness ever covered in mist, where no one dared to venture.
The conclusion thus being that the most effective defence against intellectual domination is roundly to affront the domineering intellectual.
But, as the vampire Regis articulated, it is better to go forward without an aim than loiter without an aim, and with surety much better than to retreat without an aim.
“As on all Viroleda blades, the traditional inscription: ‘Draw me not without reason; sheath me not without honour.’
Verily, great self-righteousness and great blindness are needed to call the gore pouring from the scaffold justice.
For the law is not jurisprudence, not a weighty tome full of articles, not philosophical treatises, not peevish nonsense about justice, not hackneyed platitudes about morality and ethics. The law means safe paths and highways. It means backstreets one can walk along even after sundown. It means inns and taverns one can leave to visit the privy, leaving one’s purse on the table and one’s wife beside it. The law is the sleep of people certain they’ll be woken by the crowing of the rooster and not the crashing of burning roof timbers!
For, after all, the result of all great crackdowns on miscreants is always that the miscreants enter the ranks of the guardians of public order en masse.
Ciri stroked the black cat, which had returned to the cottage in the swamp, as is customary with all cats in the world, when its love of freedom and dissolution had been undermined by cold, hunger and discomfort.
“Troops! Call out the troops!” shouted another miner, shooing away children who—as is the immemorial custom of all the world’s children—had appeared from nowhere to watch and get in the way.
even in vengeance there must be some method.
I’ve never understood why the majority of human curses and insults refer to the erotic sphere. Sex is wonderful and associated with beauty, joy and pleasure. How can the names of the sexual organs be used as a vulgar synonym for—” “Drop the subject, Regis,” Geralt interrupted.
The mill of destiny is turning, the querns of fate are grinding… Whatever is destined must occur.”
“Well, Dijkstra,” he continued. “What ails your kingdom? Aside from a shortage of money, naturally?” “Aside from a shortage of money,” the spy’s face was inscrutable, “all is well, thank you.”
“The Good Book—” Zuleyka turned over a few leaves “—says that when a man falls asleep, the gods open his ears and speak to him. Whereas the prophet Lebioda teaches that when gazing on a dream, one either sees great wisdom or great foolishness. The art is in recognising it.”
“Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, Order and Chaos? They are but symbols; in reality no such polarity exists! Brightness and Gloom are in each of us, a little of one and a little of the other.
“No one wants to suffer. But yet it is our lot. And some suffer more. Not necessarily by choice. The point is not the bearing of suffering. The point is how it is borne.”
If the secret inspirations of nature lead us to evil it is evidently essential to nature.
Emperor Fergus var Emreis—confirming women’s equality in the imperial army by special decree—had already ruled that if it was to be emancipation, then let it be emancipation. Equality ought to be complete and outright, without any exceptions or special privileges for either sex. Since then, inmates had been serving time in mixed cells in the strongholds and citadels.
“Winter’s coming.”
I’m a witcher! When they were teaching me, I swore I would act against Evil. Always. And without thinking… “Because when you start thinking,” she added hollowly, “killing stops making sense. Revenge stops making sense. And you can’t let that happen.”
“I’m Ciri of Kaer Morhen. I’m a witcher! I’ve come here to kill you.”
“War, fear, slaughter and blood,” the high priestess’ eyes drilled into the two girls, “mean a slackening of morals, and for some are also a powerful aphrodisiac.
“We have but one life, sir,” Til Echrade said softly. “You’ve chosen your way, and we’ve chosen ours. Both are uncertain and risky. And no one knows what fate will befall any of us.”
The Elder Blood that flows in your veins gives you power over time. And over space. Over the dimensions and the spheres. You are now Master of the Worlds, Ciri. You have a mighty Power. Do not let criminals or rogues take it from you and use it to their own ends… “I won’t.”
