Phil > Phil's Quotes

“The soft, fluttering cry of a barn owl rose over the churchyard. Silent men flowed out of the dark.”
― Parke Godwin

“He who whets his steel, whets his courage.”
― Steven Pressfield

“Why do we fight?" he asked.

"Because we were born.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Burning Land

“One man armed with the right word may do what an army of swordsmen cannot.”
― Robin Hobb, The Golden Fool

“Don’t do what you can’t undo, until you’ve considered what you can’t do once you’ve done it.”
― Robin Hobb, Assassin's Apprentice

“When a warrior fights not for himself, but for his brothers, when his most passionately sought goal is neither glory nor his own life’s preservation, but to spend his substance for them, his comrades, not to abandon them, not to prove unworthy of them, then his heart truly has achieved contempt for death, and with that he transcends himself and his actions touch the sublime.”
― Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire

“Fear conquers fear. This is how we Spartans do it, counterpoising to fear of death a greater fear: that of dishonor. Of exclusion from the pack.”
― Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire

“The preachers tell us that pride is a great sin, but the preachers are wrong. Pride makes a man, it drives him, it is the shield wall around his reputation... Men die, they said, but reputation does not die.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Last Kingdom

“Wide gape the gates of yellowed bone. A tongue of plank is our path between the teeth as we walk toward the gullet. Here I will be devoured. This is a true thing, near unavoidable on any path. I must enter those jaws.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Quest