Soldier of Arete Quotes

“Necromancy?” The mantis shook his head. “I have laid a ghost or two, and I questioned one once.” He swirled the wine in his cup and peered into it, seeing more in the flickers of firelight reflected there than I would have, I think. At last he said, “Our ghosts are becoming worse, have you noticed? It used to be they were no more than lost souls who had wandered away from the Lands of the Dead, or perhaps never reached them, spirits no worse dead than they had been alive, and frequently better. Such were the ghosts of which my masters told me when I was younger; such, indeed, were those I myself encountered as a young man. Now something evil is moving among them.”
― Gene Wolfe, Soldier of Arete

“Possibly I was mistaken, but it seemed to me that he went pale. At last he muttered, “It isn’t much of a ghost story, I’m afraid, but then I didn’t make it up.”
― Gene Wolfe, Soldier of Arete

“Nations are like men—growing old, never young. My son had the misfortune to be a young man of an old nation.”
― Gene Wolfe, Soldier of Arete

“Among you Medes, I’m told, there are many men so honorable that everyone trusts them. We’re not like that at all—we never trust one another. So what we do instead is make sure that each side’s represented, so that every rascal’s got two worse looking over his shoulder.”
― Gene Wolfe, Soldier of Arete

“No quarter will be given,” he told me. “Do you understand?” I said that I did not think I could kill a man who begged me for his life, but I would try.”
― Gene Wolfe, Soldier of Arete

“A man’s life is indeed short, ending in death. If it were long, his days would be of small value. If there were no death, of none. Let him fill each day with honor and joy. Let him not condemn himself or another, for he does not know the laws of his existence or theirs. If he sleeps in death, let him sleep. If while sleeping he should meet a god, he must let the god decide how well or ill he lived.

The god he meets must rule upon a man’s life, never the man himself.”
― Gene Wolfe, Soldier of Arete

“it seems to me that no poet can be greater than the one who announces to a man that freedom is his right.”
― Gene Wolfe, Soldier of Arete

“The heart remembers even when no trace of face or voice remains.”
― Gene Wolfe, Soldier of Arete

“We meet and love, someone builds a tomb for us, perhaps. It does not matter—someone else will rob it, and the winds puff away our dust; then we shall be forgotten.”
― Gene Wolfe, Soldier of Arete