Assassin's Apprentice (The Farseer Trilogy, #1)

by Robin Hobb

‘Don’t do what you can’t undo, until you’ve considered what you can’t do once you’ve done it.’

To leave such a boy in a place like this is like leaving a weapon hovering over the King’s throat.

All events, no matter how earthshaking or bizarre, are diluted within moments of their occurrence by the continuance of the necessary routines of day-to-day living.

have since come to know that many men always see another’s good fortune as a slight to themselves.

“Most prisons are of our own making. A man makes his own freedom, too.”

“When you spring to an idea, and decide it is truth, without evidence, you blind yourself to other possibilities.

“Fitz fixes feists fits. Fat suffices.

That is the trick of good government. To make folk desire to live in such a way that there is no need for its intervention.”

It was an impressive display of good food abused in the name of fashionable cooking.

But there it is; sometimes luck belongs to children and madmen.

“When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool, you end up sounding like a moron instead.

“Very little worth knowing is taught by fear,” Burrich said stubbornly. And, more warmly: “It’s a poor teacher who tries to instruct by blows and threats.

Nothing takes the heart out of a man more than the expectation of failure.

When considering a man’s motives, remember you must not measure his wheat with your bushel. He may not be using the same standard at all.”