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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| d9a3168 | Tomorrow," he shouted, "you do not fight for me! I fight for you! I fight for Wessex! I fight for your wives, for your children and your homes! Tomorrow we fight and, I swear to you on my father's grave and on my children's lives, tomorrow we shall win!" | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 8220185 | Everyone looks old to the young," Ravn said." | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 493dfdd | Due re saliranno alla Rocca di Cadarn - profetizzo - ma a regnare sara un uomo che non e re. I morti si sposeranno, quel che e perso ritornera alla luce. e una lama verra portata alla gola di una bambina. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| f54076a | Passion, Baird reckoned, was what would take men across the river and up the breach. Damn scientific soldiering now. The science of siege warfare had opened the city, but only a screaming and insane passion would take men inside. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| b42230f | Defend what's left. You can have fifty men." "Fifty! That's not enough..." "Forty," I snarled, "and if you lose the fort I'll cut your kidneys out and eat them." We were at war." | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 0c08283 | Just what do you plan to do, Sharpe?" the Lieutenant asked. "Don't know, sir. Won't know till we get there." "You're going to the mine?" "Aye, sir." "There'll be guards." "Like as not." "And only two of us." "I can count, sir." Sharpe grinned. "It's reading I find hard. But my letters are coming on, aren't they?" | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 8055fc4 | And on my conscience," he said, "I will for ever bear the weight of all those men who died in a hopeless cause. Two thousand against five thousand? How can 1 justify leading so few against so many?" "You know how." "So I can be king?" "So that we are not slaves in our own land," I said." | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 1ea122d | I knew a man who had a dumb wife. He was ever so happy. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 209cd42 | I was screaming with joy because the battle calm had come, the same blessed stillness I had felt at Cynuit. It is a joy, that feeling, and the only other joy to compare is that of being with a woman. It is as though life slows. The enemy moves as if he is wading in mud, but I was kingfisher fast. There is rage, but it is a controlled rage, and there is joy, the joy that the poets celebrate when they speak of battle, and a certainty that dea.. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 078bcfd | I stood on the dead horse and spread my arms. I held the shield high to my left and the sword to my right, and my mail coat was spattered with blood and the snow fell about my wolf-crested helmet and all I knew was the young man's joy of slaughter. "I killed Ubba Lothbrokson!" I shouted at them. "I killed him! So come and join him! Taste his death! My sword wants you!" | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 5c80f63 | I recalled that a man named Judas had betrayed the nailed god. That never made any sense to me. The god had to be nailed to a cross if he was to become their savior, and then the Christians blame the man who made that death possible. I thought they should worship him as a saint, but instead they revile him as a betrayer. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 33d2665 | So a good man can be a bad Christian?" "I suppose so." "Then a bad man," I said, "can be a good Christian?" | humour religion-christianity | Bernard Cornwell | |
| 066e421 | There's a time for caution,' I said, 'and a time to just kill the bastards. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| fac5968 | The Britons have never learned to love the Saxons. Indeed they hate us, and in those years when the last English kingdom was on the edge of destruction, they could have tipped the balance by joining Guthrum. Instead they held back their sword arms, and for that the Saxons can thank the church. Men like Asser had decided that the Danish heretics were a worse enemy than English Christians, and if I were a Briton I would resent that, because t.. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 897a8a6 | Serpent-Breath was in my hand and anger in my soul. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| c279719 | Haesten. If this world ever contained one worthless, treacherous slime-coated piece of human dung then it was Haesten. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 5030ecc | An archbishop is important to the Christians, he knows more sorcery than ordinary priests, even more than the bishops, and he has more authority. I have met several archbishops over the years and there was not one of them I would trust to run a market stall selling carrots. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 0d16fb0 | Alfred was obsessed by order, obsessed by the task of marshaling life's chaos into something that could be controlled. He would do it by the church and by the law, which are much the same thing, but I wanted to see a pattern in the strands of life. In the end I found one, and it had nothing to do with any god, but with people. With the people we love. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| bc1c91c | Christianity is not a religion that offers the solace of revenge to its adherents. For that you must go to the old women who know which herbs to pluck and what charms to say under a waning moon. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 254f669 | Cnut Longsword had near killed me with his blade Ice-Spite and it was small consolation that Serpent-Breath had sliced his throat in the same heartbeat that his sword had broken a rib and pierced my lung. | cnut cornwell saxon-stories the-empty-throne uhtred | Bernard Cornwell | |
| f3466ba | He's a boy who must learn to be a warrior and a king,' I said, 'and death is his destiny. He must learn to give it.' I patted AEthelstan's shoulder. 'Make it quick, boy,' I told him. 'He deserves a slow death, but this is your first killing. Make it easy for yourself. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| ca614e3 | Madness has a purpose! It's a gift from the Gods, and like all their gifts it comes with a price, | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 8eea79c | The only purpose a Council serves is to make you all feel important. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 848947b | You're a Christian?" "Of course!" "You believe in miracles?" I asked, and he nodded. "Then you'd better fetch your five loaves and two fishes," I went on, "and pray that your wretched god provides the rest." | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 8cbf052 | I will never understand Christians. I have seen men and women whip themselves till their backs were nothing but strips of flesh hanging from exposed ribs, watched pilgrims limp on bleeding broken feet to worship the tooth of the whale that swallowed Jonah, and seen a man hammer nails through his own feet. What god wants such nonsense? And why prefer a god who wants you to torture yourself instead of worshipping Eostre who wants you to take .. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 8bdf4d9 | Hengall the Warrior hated war. The business of life, he liked to say, is to plant grain, not blades. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 6256285 | God offers his protection to sinners," Ceolnoth said unctuously. "Especially to sinners," Ceolberht said. "I'll remember that," I said, "when I've finished sinning." | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 466ed5f | I don't fight old men," he said. That was strange. No one had ever called me old before. I remember laughing, but there was shock behind my laughter. Weeks before, talking with AEthelflaed, I had mocked her because she was staring at her face in a great silver platter. She was worried because she had lines about her eyes and she had responded to my mockery by thrusting the plate at me, and I had looked at my reflection and seen that my bear.. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| a67f667 | Stow all the world's evils behind a door and tell men that they must never, ever, open the door, and it will be opened because there is pure joy in destruction. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 62f6af1 | The monks had murdered Danes and Ragnar had punished them, though these days the story is always told that the monks were innocently at prayer and died as spotless martyrs. In truth they were malevolent killers of women and children, but what chance does truth have when priests tell tales? | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| d10a786 | Voce nunca, nunca deve contar seus crimes aos outros, a nao ser que sejam tao grandes a ponto de nao poderem ficar escondidos, e nesse caso descreva-os como politica ou acao de Estado. | politics | Bernard Cornwell | |
| 159e111 | There is no number so unlucky as thirteen. Once, in Valhalla, there was a feast for twelve gods, but Loki, the trickster god, went uninvited and he played his evil games, persuading Hod the Blind to throw a sprig of mistletoe at his brother, Baldur. Baldur was the favorite god, the good one, but he could be killed by mistletoe and so his blind brother threw the sprig and Baldur died and Loki laughed, and ever since we have known that thirte.. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 1f53792 | Because I'm tired of Wessex," I said, "tired of priests, tired of being told what your god's will is, tired of being told that I'm a sinner, tired of your endless damned nonsense, tired of that nailed tyrant you call god who only wants us to be miserable. And I refused to give the oath because my ambition is to go back north, to Bebbanburg, and to kill the men who hold it, and I cannot do that if I am sworn to Edward and he wants something .. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 19420dd | Esse e o verdadeiro dom das mulheres, ser sabias, e nao sao muitos os homens que o tem. | sabedoria | Bernard Cornwell | |
| cf238b2 | It is hard to force obedience," he said, "without encouraging resentment." | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 57bfa7e | Thousands!" Appah Rao's tone mocked the claim. "You may have thousands, Colonel, but the Tippoo has tigers." | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| bf77cb5 | I had not liked him. I had struggled against him and for him, I had cursed him and thanked him, despised him and admired him. I hated his religion and its cold disapproving gaze, its malevolence that cloaked itself in pretended kindness, and its allegiance to a god who would drain the joy from the world by naming it sin, but Alfred's religion had made him a good man and a good king. And Alfred's joyless soul had proved a rock against which .. | death-of-kings | Bernard Cornwell | |
| 45a0a85 | Put a cat to watch a flock and the wolves eat well. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 1156f47 | Dizem que este Deus (deus cristao) e do perdao. Melhor ofender um desses do que qualquer outro. | ofensas | Bernard Cornwell | |
| 6a2067c | So now I shall write the tale's ending with my sword beside me and I shall hope that I am given time to finish this tale of Arthur, my Lord, who was betrayed, reviled and, after his departure, missed like no other man was ever missed in all of Britain's history. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| a315a09 | Men fear wanderers for they have no rules. The Danes came as strangers, rootless and violent, and that, I thought, was why I was always happier in their company. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 35533b2 | The Gods play games with us, but if we open ourselves then we can become a part of the game instead of its victims. | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 8f45c86 | Wyrd bid ful araed," I said, and that is true. Fate is inexorable. Destiny is all. We make oaths, we make choices, but fate makes our decisions." | Bernard Cornwell | ||
| 28a0994 | The god had to be nailed to a cross if he was to become their saviour, and then the Christians blame the man who made that death possible. I thought they should worship him as a saint, but instead they revile him as a betrayer. | Bernard Cornwell |