Royal Assassin (The Farseer Trilogy, #2)

by Robin Hobb

Fear feels remarkably like fear, regardless of the source.

He mourns of all the knowledge that goes into a grave each time a man dies, even the commonest of men.

But sometimes there is truth in impetuosity.

One can only walk so far from one’s true self before the bond either snaps, or pulls one back.

“Our own ambitions and tasks that we set for ourselves, the framework we attempt to impose upon the world, is no more than a shadow of a tree cast across the snow. It will change as the sun moves, be swallowed in the night, sway with the wind, and when the smooth snow vanishes,

it will lie distorted upon the uneven earth. But the tree continues to be.“

Men it is who think they can rule others’ lives but have no bonds to them.

Do you think that to bond or not to bond is for you alone to decide? My heart is my own. I give it where I will.

He shook his head pityingly. “This, more than anything else, is what I have never understood about your people. You can roll dice, and understand that the whole game may hinge on one turn of a die. You deal out cards, and say that all a man’s fortune for the night may turn upon one hand. But a man’s whole life, you sniff at, and say, what, this naught of a human, this fisherman, this carpenter, this thief, this cook, why, what can they do in the great wide world?

And so you putter and sputter your lives away, like candles burning in a draft.”

“Are you sure, Fitz? Are you sure? What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbor, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I change the world today?”

🥲

And no one has time not to think of such things. Each creature in the world should consider this thing, every moment of the heart’s beating. Otherwise, what is the point of arising each day?”

“Sometimes,” he observed obliquely, “you have to trust people to understand you are not perfect.”

As to my condition…well, the more one forces one’s body to do, the more it can do.

I’m proud of you. It’s not the kind of work a man does that says he can be proud or not. It’s how he does it. Be proud of yourself.”

Strange, how the act I had been about to commit now seemed so monstrous when I discovered someone else had already done it.

Nighteyes, my brother. How do I thank you? Stay alive. A pause. And bring me ginger cake. You shall have it, I promised fervently.

But let us not borrow trouble.

Good advice.

“Anything that must be done, can be done,”

Curiosity is a disturbingly strong force.

The exercise for centering oneself is a simple one. Stop thinking of what you intend to do. Stop thinking of what you have just done. Then, stop thinking that you have stopped thinking of those things. Then you will find the Now, the time that stretches eternal, and is really the only time there is. Then, in that place, you will finally have time to be yourself.

Time is no miser when one lives always in the now.

There is a place where all time is now, and the choices are simple and always your own.