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Nynaeve al’Meara was what, back in Seanchan, one would call a telarti—a woman with fire in her soul.
How did he so fully mix determination and diffidence, like two threads woven together? He did what needed to be done, all the while worrying that he shouldn’t be the one doing it.
The idea made Androl want to sick up. Forcing someone to be evil? That shouldn’t be possible. Fate moved people about, put them in terrible positions, cost them their lives, sometimes their sanity. But the choice to serve the Dark One or the Light … surely that one choice could not be taken from a person.
The end result of this will be war. Massive, overpowering war. You will have peace for a time, particularly while those who revere you live. But for every year of peace you gain, you will earn one of greater destruction once the thing falls apart.”
“I did not ask for them to follow me. Light! I did all that I could to stop them.” “Duty is heavier than a mountain, Dai Shan.”
“Some men,” Agelmar said, “are destined to die, and they fear it. Others are destined to live, and to lead, and they find it a burden.
Matrim baffled the Blood. That was good, as it kept them off balance. But he also represented disorder, with his random ways and constant stabs at authority. Fortuona represented order, and she had married chaos himself.
A woman was most resourceful with a knife at her throat.
The Pattern had placed Knotai before her, had shoved her into his arms. The Dragon Reborn had seen and spoken truth about her—for all the illusion of order, her rule was like a heavy rock balanced on its smallest point.
“I may lead you wrong now and then, but in the end, you can be sure that I’m always a safe bet.”
“As a queen ages,” Siuan said, “she begins to think about her legacy. Light, every goodwife probably starts to think the same things. Will she have an heir to hold what she has created? As a woman grows in wisdom, she realizes that what she alone can accomplish pales compared to what her legacy can achieve.
Uncomplicated men assumed others to have uncomplicated motivations,
“You are darkness,” Rand said loudly. “Darkness cannot push back Light. Darkness exists only when Light fails, when it flees. I will not fail. I will not flee. You cannot win so long as I bar your path, Shai’tan.”
Women are as fully capable of being evil as men. Why should one hesitate to kill one, but not the other? The Light does not judge one based on gender, but on the merit of the heart.”
The man would hold back and deliberate, worrying over his decisions, until boiling forward in a reckless military action.
He figured that every man on the field felt they should be someplace else. The only thing to do was keep on fighting.
She’d once seen war differently. She’d imagined every man committed every moment of the day. A true battle, however, was not a sprint; it was an extended, soul-grinding trudge.
“May the Light illumine a day when men need not kill at all,” Galad said tiredly. “It is not fitting to take joy in death.”
MEN WHO THINK THEY ARE OPPRESSED WILL SOMEDAY FIGHT. I WILL REMOVE FROM THEM NOT JUST THEIR WILL TO RESIST, BUT THE VERY SUSPICION THAT SOMETHING IS WRONG.
Some men would call it brash, foolhardy, suicidal. The world was rarely changed by men who were unwilling to try being at least one of the three.
“I am just a man,” Lan whispered. “That is all I have ever been.”
“I did not come here to win,” Lan whispered, smiling. “I came here to kill you. Death is lighter than a feather.”
He wanted so badly to protect them, the people who believed in him. Their deaths, and the danger they faced, were an enormous weight upon him. How could a man just … let go? Wasn’t that letting go of responsibility? Or was it giving the responsibility to them?
We are reborn, Rand thought, so we can do better the next time. So do better.
OH, I DO, SHAI’TAN, Rand said softly. I EMBRACE IT, FOR DEATH IS—AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN—LIGHTER THAN A FEATHER. DEATH ARRIVES IN A HEARTBEAT, NO MORE TANGIBLE THAN A FLICKER OF LIGHT. IT HAS NO WEIGHT, NO SUBSTANCE.…
“I have found,” Chiad said dryly, “that pointing out stupidity serves only to make men stupider.
“You may see in yourself someone who lets himself go too far, but that’s not the man I see. If anything, Perrin, I’ve seen in you someone who has learned to hold himself back.
My duty, Perrin thought, is to do the things Rand cannot.
He came like the wind, like the wind touched everything, and like the wind was gone.
