The Song of Albion Collection Quotes

“If I have learned anything in my time among you, it is this: true honor lives not in the skill of weapons or the strength of arms, but in virtue. Skill fades and strength fails; virtue alone remains. Therefore, let us put off all that is false. Let us prefer instead the valor of virtue, and the glory of right.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, The Song of Albion Collection

“Kings come and go, but sovereignty remains. Kings are men, and men may fall to vice and corruption, but sovereignty is pure and undefiled at its source.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, The Song of Albion Collection

“Knowledge is a burden—once taken up, it can never be discarded.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, The Song of Albion Collection

“It is the poor man who clenches so tightly to the gold he is given—for fear of losing it. The man of wealth spends his gold freely to accomplish his will in the world. It is the same with life.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, The Song of Albion Collection

“Of course it is escapist,” he cried. “That is its glory! When a soldier is a prisoner of war it is his duty to escape—and take as many with him as he can.” He went on to explain, “The moneylenders, the knownothings, the authoritarians have us all in prison; if we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as possible.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, The Song of Albion Collection

“The land is alive. It draws its life from the people who work it, just as they draw their life from the king. If corruption taints the king, the people suffer—yes, and eventually, the land will suffer as well. That is the way of it.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, The Song of Albion Collection

“Life is harsh and it is relentless. You will choose in the end—one way or the other. No one escapes the choice.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, The Song of Albion Collection

“Goodly-Wise is the Many Gifted; let all men honor him and perform endless homage to the One who sustains all with his Swift Sure Hand.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, The Song of Albion Collection

“Where food is taken alone, the repast is meager,” answered the ancient one affably. “Yet, where meat is shared among true companions of the hearth, the meal becomes a feast!”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, The Song of Albion Collection

“It is not easy to keep the flame of hope burning in the cold, empty heart of Sollen. The Season of Snows is not the time to make bright plans for the future. One slow foot in front of the other—that was all the future I knew. Just one more step, and then one more . . . I cared about nothing else.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, The Song of Albion Collection

“But, strange to tell, though I could remember those first glowing days of my arrival, I could not without intense effort recall much of my life before that—save in the most indefinite terms. Indeed, when compared to the intensely vivid life I knew in Albion, my life before coming to the Otherworld seemed almost unutterably remote and insignificant, little more than a vague pantomime acted out in a dim, colorless, half-light.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, The Song of Albion Collection

“Cling too tightly to your life and you will lose it, my reluctant warrior. You must become the master of your life, not its slave.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, The Song of Albion Collection

“If you must always defeat two enemies each time you take the field of battle, you will soon be overcome. And of any two enemies, anger is always the stronger.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, The Song of Albion Collection

“For the more words I had for things, the better I could frame my thoughts, the more vivid my thoughts became. Awareness deepened, consciousness sharpened.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, The Song of Albion Collection

“If I had ever nurtured any notions of nobility, bravery, courage, dignity, or the like, these exalted qualities were embodied in the faces I saw. Clear-eyed, firm-jawed, virile, strong, and proud— they were the living embodiments of every red-blooded boy’s childhood fantasy of glorious manhood: heroism incarnate. That they were going to kill me seemed a thing of piddling consequence.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, The Song of Albion Collection

“How can you see a real forest if you have never seen a fairy forest?”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, The Song of Albion Collection

“It is the freedom of believers to shout aloud what doubters dare not confess.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, The Song of Albion Collection

“Albion was many times larger in every way than the tidily compacted Britain I had left behind. Judging from the distances traveled, Albion was immense; both the land and the world that contained it were far more expansive than anything I could have dreamed.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, The Song of Albion Collection

“Unbelievers enjoy the security of their unbelief; there is great confidence in ignorance. But I had seen the Cythrawl.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, The Song of Albion Collection