Sword Song Quotes

“Love is a dangerous thing. It comes in disguise to change our life... Lust is the deceiver. Lust wrenches our lives until nothing matters except the one we think we love, and under that deceptive spell we kill for them, give all for them, and then, when we have what we have wanted, we discover that it is all an illusion and nothing is there. Lust is a voyage to nowhere, to an empty land, but some men just love such voyages and never care about the destination. Love is a voyage too, a voyage with no destination except death, but a voyage of bliss.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“Priests come to my home beside the northern sea where they find an old man, and they tell me I am just a few paces from the fires of hell. I only need repent, they say, and I will go to heaven and live forevermore in the blessed company of the saints.

And I would rather burn till time itself burns out.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“Love is a voyage too, a voyage with no destination except death, but a voyage of bliss.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“E fiquei olhando para aquela costa, sabendo que o destino iria me trazer de volta, e toquei o punho de Bafo de Serpente, porque a espada também tinha um destino e eu sabia que ela voltaria a este local. Este era um local para minha espada cantar.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“Os guerreiros defendem o lar, defendem as crianças, defendem as mulheres, defendem a colheita e matam os inimigos que vêm roubar essas coisas. Sem guerreiros a terra seria um lugar devastado, desolado e repleto de lamentos. No entanto, a verdadeira recompensa de um guerreiro não é a prata e o ouro que ele pode ganhar nos braços, e sim a reputação, e é por isso que existem poetas.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“Toquei Bafo de Serpente de novo e me pareceu que ela teve um tremor. Algumas vezes eu achava que a espada cantava. Era um canto fino, apenas entreouvido, um som penetrante, a canção da espada que desejava sangue; a canção da espada.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“Cowardice is always with us, and bravery, the thing that provokes the poets to make their songs about us, is merely the will to overcome the fear.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“E enquanto houver um reino nesta ilha varrida pelo vento, haverá guerra. Portanto não podemos nos encolher para longe da guerra. Não podemos nos esconder de sua crueldade, de seu sangue, do fedor, da malignidade ou do júbilo, porque a guerra virá para nós, desejemos ou não. Guerra é destino, e o destino é inexorável.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“The Lord Uhtred sought to annoy you, bishop," the king said, "and it is best not to give him the satisfaction of showing that he has succeeded.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“You never, ever, tell others of your crimes, not unless they are so big as to be incapable of concealment, and then you describe them as policy or statecraft.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“Você nunca, nunca deve contar seus crimes aos outros, a não ser que sejam tão grandes a ponto de não poderem ficar escondidos, e nesse caso descreva-os como política ou ação de Estado.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“Um país é a sua história, bispo; a soma de todas as suas histórias. Somos o que nossos pais fizeram de nós, suas vitórias nos deram o que temos.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“In the dark, lord, all cats are black.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“He hates you, but why should the falcon care about the sparrow's hate?”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“I had thought about Alban for a while. “Why,” I had then asked, “if your god can pull out a man’s eyes, didn’t he just save Alban’s life?” “Because God chose not to, of course!” Beocca had answered sniffily, which is just the kind of answer you always get when you ask a Christian priest to explain another inexplicable act of their god.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“It is hard to force obedience,” he said, “without encouraging resentment.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“He stared at me and, though the fate he pronounced was golden, there was a malevolence in his dead eyes. ‘You will be king,’ he said, and the last word sounded like poison on his tongue.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“Lust is a voyage to nowhere, to an empty land, but some men just love such voyages and never care about the destination.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“Wessex. At the very least Alfred would pay”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“Stiorra, Stiorra!” I would say as I tickled her, or let her play with my arm rings. Stiorra, so beautiful.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“nothing like the version my poets warble. It was not heroic and grand, and it was not a lord of war giving out death with unstoppable sword-skill. It was panic. It was abject fear. It was men shitting themselves with fright, men pissing, men bleeding, men grimacing and men crying as pathetically as whipped children. It was a chaos of flying blades, of shields breaking, of half-caught glimpses, of despairing parries and blind lunges. Feet slipped on blood and the dead lay with curling hands and the injured clutched awful wounds that would kill them and they cried for their mothers and the gulls cried, and all that the poets celebrate, because that is their job.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“I killed that ship’s crew to save myself having to kill hundreds of other Danes.”

“The Lord Jesus would have wanted you to show mercy,” she said, her eyes wide.

She is an idiot.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“I only need repent, they say, and I will go to heaven and live for evermore in the blessed company of the saints.

And I would rather burn till time itself burns out.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“and that was the first truthful answer he had given to the Norseman. For the priest had held a sword many times before and he did know how to fight and I doubted he was ready to die. He was Father Pyrlig.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“She says she loves me,” he told me. “Of course she says that,” I said. He paused, and when he spoke again his voice had brightened, as though he had been encouraged by my words. “And I must be nineteen by now, lord! Maybe even twenty?” “Eighteen?” I suggested. “I could have been married four years ago, lord!” “But why marry a whore?” I asked him harshly. “She’s . . .” Sihtric began. “She’s old,” I snarled, “maybe thirty? And she’s addled. Ealhswith only has to see a man and her thighs fly apart! If you lined up every man who’d tupped that whore you’d have an army big enough to conquer all Britain.” Beside me Ralla sniggered. “You’d be in that army, Ralla?” I asked. “Twenty times over, lord,” the shipmaster said. “She loves me,” Sihtric spoke sullenly. “She loves your silver,” I said, “and besides, why put a new sword in an old scabbard?”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“From the far north, lord. From the land of ice and birch. Strange things happen there. They say men can fly in the darkness, and I did hear that the dead walk on the frozen seas, but I never saw such a thing.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“Lust is a voyage to nowhere, to an empty land, but some men just love such voyages and never care about the destination. Love is a voyage too, a voyage with no destination except death, but a voyage of bliss.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“If you collect a fat flock, you don't leave it grazing beside a wolf's den.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“It's hard to force obedience without encouraging resentment.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“-He's like a man putting wattle hurdles in the face of a flood.
-Brace a hurdle well and it'll turn a stream.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song