The Light of All That Falls (The Licanius Trilogy, #3)

by James Islington

Faithful people suffer and evil people prosper all the time, Davian—you must know that is true. Besides, if our actions are driven only by reward or punishment—eternal or otherwise—then they are motivated by greed and selfishness, not faith or love. That is where so many people go wrong, even those who say they believe in El. They obey because they think it will make their lives better, rather than themselves. And that is very much the wrong reason.”

like listening to a piece of music and judging the composer by how skillfully the musician is playing it.

The question that needs answering isn’t ever ‘who acts better.’ It is easy to seize upon the worst of groups—but every group is a collection of individuals, and every individual is flawed. Some are contrary, some are outright liars when they say that they believe in something. So every action has to be assessed against what someone claims they believe, not simply seen as a result of it.” He shrugged. “Does that make sense? You should never judge the sides of an argument simply by who is doing the arguing.”

Evil men rarely convince others to their side by asking them to perform dark deeds for no good reason. They will always start with the lightest shade of gray. They so often use what seems like a good cause.”

“Gray is the color of cowardice and ignorance and sheer laziness,

If something is not clearly right or wrong then it bears actually figuring out which one it is, not dismissal into some nebulous third category. If you have a basis for your morality, a foundation for it, then there will always be an answer—and if you do not, then trying to decide whether anything is right or wrong is an exercise in futility and irrelevance.”

“Law is about order, not right and wrong,” Taeris agreed. “And the latter should always trump the former.”

“It’s not enough to fight for the right side. You have to figure out how to fight the right way, too. If winning is truly all that matters, then we’ve lost sight of what’s actually right and wrong in the first place.”