Enemy of God Quotes

“But when you have order, you don't need Gods. When everything is well ordered and disciplined then nothing is unexpected. If you understand everything,' I said carefully, 'then there's no room left for magic. It's only when you're lost and frightened and in the dark that you call on the Gods, and they like us to call on them. It makes them feel powerful, and that's why they like us to live in chaos.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Enemy of God

“To hear the tales told at night-time hearths you would think we had made a whole new country in Britain, named it Camelot and peopled it with shining heroes, but the truth is that we simply ruled Dumnonia as best we could, we ruled it justly and we never called it Camelot. Camelot exists only in the poets' dreams, while in our Dumnonia, even in those good years, the harvests still failed, the plagues still ravaged us and wars were still fought.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Enemy of God

“Do you really think men and women thanked you for bringing them peace? They just became bored with your peace and so brewed their own trouble to fill the boredom. Men don’t want peace, Arthur, they want distraction from tedium,”
― Bernard Cornwell, Enemy of God

“Mas quando você tem ordem, você não precisa dos Deuses. Quando tudo está bem ordenado e disciplinado, nada é inesperado. Se você entende tudo, não resta espaço para a magia. Só quando está perdido, apavorado e no escuro é que você chama os Deuses, e eles gostam de ser chamados. Isso os torna poderosos, e é por isso que gostam de que vivamos no caos.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Enemy of God

“I have lived my life, Derfel,’ he said at last, ‘according to oaths. I know no other way. I resent oaths, and so should all men, for oaths bind us, they hobble our freedom, and who among us doesn’t want to be free? But if we abandon oaths then we abandon guidance. We fall into chaos. We just fall. We become no better than beasts.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Enemy of God

“If an oath is a mistake then you are still obligated because you are sworn to it.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Enemy of God

“Even now, with my eyes closed, I sometimes see that child coming from the sea, her face smiling, her thin body outlined against the white clinging dress and her hands reaching for her lover. I cannot hear a gull’s cry without seeing her for she will haunt me till the day I die, and after death, wherever it is my soul goes, she will be there; a child killed for a King, by law, in Camelot.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Enemy of God

“Am I to deny Mark justice because he is old and gross and ugly? Do youth and beauty deserve perverted justice? What have I fought for all these years, if not to make certain that justice is even-handed?”
― Bernard Cornwell, Enemy of God

“I still feel a pang every time I look at her,’ I admitted. ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ he said enthusiastically. ‘A pang! A quickness in the heart.’ ‘Love,’ I said drily. ‘We’re lucky, you and I,’ he said, smiling. ‘It’s friendship, it’s love, and it’s still something more. It’s what the Irish call anmchara, a soul friend. Who else do you want to talk to at the day’s end? I love the evenings when we can just sit and talk and the sun goes down and moths come in to the candles.’ ‘And we talk of children,’ I said, and wished I had not, ‘and of servants’ quarrels, and whether the cross-​eyed kitchen slave is pregnant again, and we wonder who broke the pothook, and whether the thatch needs repair or whether it will last another year, and we try to work out what to do about the old dog that can’t walk any more, and what excuse Cadell will conjure up for not paying his rent again, and we discuss whether the flax has steeped enough, and if we should rub butterwort on the cows’ udders to improve their yield. That’s what we talk of.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Enemy of God

“Lord Derfel, you do insult a man so very easily. What was it to be? My head in a pit dunged by slaves? What a paltry imagination you do have. Mine, I fear, sometimes seems excessive, even to me.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Enemy of God

“If you understand everything, then there is no room for magic.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Enemy of God

“The only purpose a Council serves is to make you all feel important.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Enemy of God

“- Então Guinevere quebrou o juramento do matrimônio - disse Nimue. - Você acha que ela foi a primeira? Ou acha que isso a torna uma prostituta? Nesse caso a Britânia está cheia de prostitutas até a borda. Ela não é prostituta, Derfel. Ela é uma mulher forte que nasceu com mente rápida e boa aparência, e Artur amou a aparência e não quis usar a mente dela. Não a deixou torná-lo rei, por isso ela se voltou para aquela religião ridícula. E tudo que Artur fazia era dizer como ela seria feliz quando ele pudesse pendurar Excalibur e começar a criar gado! - Nimue riu da ideia. - E como nunca ocorreu a Artur ser infiel, ele jamais suspeitou de Guinevere. O resto de nós suspeitava, mas não Artur. Ele vivia se dizendo que o casamento era perfeito, e o tempo todo estava a quilômetros de distância e a boa aparência de Guinevere atraía homens como a carniça atrai moscas. E eram homens bonitos, homens inteligentes, homens bem-humorados, homens que queriam o poder, e um era um homem bonito que queria todo o poder que conseguisse agarrar, por isso Guinevere decidiu ajudá-lo. Artur queria um curral de vacas, mas Lancelot quer ser Grande Rei da Britânia, e Guinevere acha esse um desafio mais interessante do que criar vacas ou limpar a merda dos bebês. E aquela religião idiota a encorajou. Árbitra dos tronos! - Ela cuspiu. - Guinevere não estava dormindo com Lancelot porque era uma prostituta, seu grande idiota, estava dormindo com ele pra fazer de seu homem o Grande Rei.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Enemy of God