Academ's Fury (Codex Alera, #2)

by Jim Butcher

If the beginning of wisdom is in realizing that one knows nothing, then the beginning of understanding is in realizing that all things exist in accord with a single truth: Large things are made of smaller things. Drops of ink are shaped into letters, letters form words, words form sentences, and sentences combine to express thought. So it is with the growth of plants that spring from seeds, as well as with walls built of many stones. So it is with mankind, as the customs and traditions of our progenitors blend together to form the foundation for our own cities, history, and way of life. Be they dead stone, living flesh, or rolling sea; be they idle times or events of world-shattering proportion, market days, or desperate battles, to this law, all things hold: Large things are made from small things. Significance is cumulative—but not always obvious.

Everything mates,” Doroga said. “Everything likes to. But only your people try to pretend they do neither.”

“Head got nothing to do with the heart. Your heart wants what it wants. Head got to learn that it can only kill the heart or else get out of the way.”

“There are old swordsmen and bold swordsmen,” Nedus said, idly employing the old Legion maxim. “But very few old, bold swordsmen.”

I suspect that is because you have a conscience, whereas a great many of the people here would only be moved to it by their political ambitions. Ambitions are incompatible with consciences, you know. The two strangle one another straightaway and leave an awful mess behind them.”