Demon in White (The Sun Eater, #3)

by Christopher Ruocchio

He looked round at the solarium as if he’d never really seen it before. I knew the look well. It was a look more closely kin to fear than people really believe. A fear born of the fact that though we may come back to a place at the end of our journeys, we never really return, for we are not the same person who departed.

“Because I have earned their respect. Rank only formalizes relationships between people, Alexander. It does not create them. One has rank because one deserves it, and if one does not deserve it, he will lose his rank. Or his life. A man would do well to become worthy of his honors, else he will be deposed as a tyrant.”

To be a good knight, a good leader, a good man for that matter, you must judge a person by his or her actions. By their character.

That is the danger of having principles. In politics, principle is like a sword aimed at the heart. Far better, one might be forgiven for thinking, for a lord to have no principles than to risk that he might fall on that sword. The principled man simply has more to lose. It is what makes them such fabulous villains.

It was not grief that pained me then, but love. Love consumes, so the aphorism goes. I have not found it to be so. Love is not a burden—though it is a responsibility. A duty. Love is an honor—an office we hold. An oath.

Men are slower to act from principle than self-interest, and far slower to act on principle than jealousy or revenge.

“They say no sword can cut the Devil down.”