Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive, #4)

by Brandon Sanderson

Well, they were honorspren. He suspected they wouldn’t be able to resist a chance to formally defend their honor—as they saw it.

for Ado’s sake.”

Though the relationship hadn’t worked out, he could now see that they’d both grown because of it.

They saw only their own strange ideal of what he should be.

“You might not be in command anymore,” Rlain said with a slight cadence to his words, “but you’re still the captain of Bridge Four.”

He had discovered weakness in himself, but that wasn’t something to be ashamed of. Because of that weakness, he could help in ways nobody else could.

I always live, Kaladin thought, a bitter thought echoing from long ago. So I can keep suffering.

The Sibling. The third Bondsmith spren.

A surgeon’s knife could be a subtle thing, meant to cause as little harm as possible.

Kaladin, what’s wrong with you?” “Cold sweats,” he muttered. “Emotional detachment. Insensibility, accompanied by hyper-recall of traumatic moments.”

Perhaps this Pursuer had lived so long that his traditions had taken control of his reason.

The Fused instead seemed more like people who had lived so long thinking one way that they had come to accept their opinions as the natural state of things.

We don’t create because we assume we’ve already created what we need to. We are immortal, and so think nothing can ever surprise us—and that makes us complacent.”

How much misery would you have saved the world if you’d used your talents instead of your fists?”

“I’m telling you that if you want to change the world, you have to stop being part of the problem!”

“The heart might provide the purpose, but the head provides the method, the path. Passion is nothing without a plan. Wanting something doesn’t make it happen.

“Don’t play the sixth fool, Father,”

“Because I will take responsibility for what I’ve done! I will work within whatever confines I must in order to protect people!

You can’t be taking stuff from people who don’t have much. That was the first rule of not being a total-and-utter-useless-piece-of-chull-dung.

Smart Taravangian knew the how but not the why.

Storms … Odium could be tricked. By dumb Taravangian.

You could have simply come and given me the order today, then left, Taravangian thought. You talk instead. You’re lonely. You want to show off. You’re … human.

Odium had incredible power; that was clear. He was a god, in power. But in mind? In mind he was a man.

Taravangian knew firsthand that you could plan and plan and plan, but if one man’s choices didn’t align to your will, it didn’t matter. A thousand wrong plans were no more useful than a single wrong one.

She had two distinct advantages though. She was Radiant. And Ruthar was an idiot.

“If you spend your life knocking people down, you eventually find they won’t stand up for you. There’s poetry in that, don’t you think, you storming personification of a cancerous anal discharge?”

Eventually Dalinar had done what any good commander did when faced by such persistent mass insubordination: He backed down. When good men disobeyed, it was time to look at your orders.

Don’t forget, part of Dalinar thought. When you were broken on the floor, consumed by your past, this boy held you. Don’t forget who was strong, when you—the Blackthorn—were weak.

We must not let our desires for a specific result cloud our perceptions.

little piece of divinity,

“If there is a god, then I think we could find him in the way we care about one another.

how can we not, in searching, wish for a specific result? What scientist goes into a project without a hope for what they will find?

Sometimes ignorance was an advantage, as you weren’t limited by the expectations of the past.

Don’t offend, but also don’t be too quick to bend.

She needed a smaller problem she could work on first, to give her brain some time away from the bigger problem. What was a smaller problem she could fix?

“There are no fair fights, Jasnah,” Wit said. “There’s never been such a thing. The term is a lie used to impose imaginary order on something chaotic. Two men of the same height, age, and weapon will not fight one another fairly, for one will always have the advantage in training, talent, or simple luck.”

In the end, loss and victory smelled the same.

“Never take casualty reports on the night of the battle, Brightness,”

“Give yourself a little time to enjoy the meal before you look at the bill.”

“No,” Dalinar said. “There is a just way to victory. The methods must match the ideal to be obtained.”

Panic on the battlefield kills more men than enemy spears. Never run. Always retreat.

To enjoy easy days, sometimes you had to first do difficult things.

Navani felt the answers were right in front of her. So often, that was the case with science.

“I can name this rhythm: the Rhythm of War. Odium and Honor mixed together.

“It’s an old trick, Ulim,” she said. “Everyone—humans, listeners, and apparently gods—deep down suspects that every failure is their own. If you reflect blame on them, most people will assume they are responsible.”

The trouble wasn’t getting answers. It was finding the presence of mind to accept them.

‘I doubt any dragon ever had it so good anyway.’

“It will,” Wit said, “but then it will get better. Then it will get worse again. Then better. This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is truth. I promise you, Kaladin: You will be warm again.”

Oftentimes the greatest discoveries came not because a woman was looking for them, but because she was so engrossed in some other topic that she started making connections she never would have otherwise.

He couldn’t think fast like others. But that made him different, not stupid. Stupid was a choice.