Brandon Sanderson - The Way of Kings (2010)

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I point out truths when I see them, Brightlord Sadeas. Each man has his place. Mine is to make insults. Yours is to be in-sluts.

Brandon Sanderson
The finest defense of character is correct action. Acquaint yourself with virtue, and you can expect proper treatment from those around you.

Brandon Sanderson
Overcome your guilt. Care, but not too much. Take responsibility, but don't blame yourself. Protect, save, help- but know when to give up. They're precarious ledges to walk. How do I do it?

Brandon Sanderson
This world, it is a tempest sometimes. But remember, the sun always rises again.

Brandon Sanderson
Too many of us take great pains with what we ingest through our mouths, and far less with what we partake of through our ears and eyes.

Brandon Sanderson
Of all the recruits in his cohort, he had learned the quickest. How to hold the spear, how to stand to spar. He'd done it almost without instruction. That had shocked Tukks. But why should it have? You were not shocked when a child knew how to breathe. You were not shocked when a skyeel took flight for the first time. You should not be shocked when you hand Kaladin Stormblessed a spear and he knows how to use it.

Brandon Sanderson
Does one deserve to have evil done to her by consequence of putting herself where evil can reach her?

Brandon Sanderson
All the world does as it is supposed to, except for humans. Maybe that's why you so often want to kill each other.

Brandon Sanderson
I want you to go back into the barrack and tell the men to come out after the storm. Tell them to look up at me tied here. Tell them I'll open my eyes and look back at them, and they'll know hat I survived.

Brandon Sanderson
The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.

Brandon Sanderson
Those candle flames were like the lives of men. So fragile. So deadly. Left alone, they lit and warmed. Let run rampant, they would destroy the very things they were meant to illuminate. Embryonic bonfires, each bearing a seed of destruction so potent it could tumble cities and dash kings to their knees.

Brandon Sanderson
In the end, all men die. How you lived will be far more important to the Almighty than what you accomplished.

Brandon Sanderson
Ignorance is hardly unusual, Miss Davar. The longer I live, the more I come to realize that it is the natural state of the human mind. There are many who will strive to defend its sanctity and then expect you to be impressed with their efforts.

Brandon Sanderson
To lack feeling is to be dead, but to act on every feeling is to be a child.

Brandon Sanderson
Must someone, some unseen thing, declare what is right for it to be right? I believe that my own morality - which answers only to my heart - is more sure and true than the morality of those who do right only because they fear retribution.

Brandon Sanderson
The nature of morality must be considered, and preferably before one is exposed to situations where a moral decision is required.

Brandon Sanderson
At times, it seems to me that to be human is to want that which we cannot have. For some, this is power. For me, it is peace.

Brandon Sanderson
Life before Death. Strength before Weakness. Journey before Destination.

Brandon Sanderson
In the end, I must proclaim that no good can be achieved of false means. For the substance of our existence is not in the achievement, but in the method.

Brandon Sanderson
Ah, the outdoors,' Shallan said. 'I visited that mythical place once.

Brandon Sanderson
If I should die, Dalinar said, then I would do so having lived my life right. It is not the destination that matters, but how one arrives there. The Codes? No. The Way of Kings. That storming book.

Brandon Sanderson
Can a woman not walk with her possessions down the street of a city?

Brandon Sanderson
People see in stories what they're looking for, my young friend.

Brandon Sanderson
Strength does not make one capable of rule; it makes one capable of service.

Brandon Sanderson
We follow the codes not because they bring gain, but because we loathe the people we would otherwise become.

Brandon Sanderson
Too many scholars think of research as purely a cerebral pursuit. If we do nothing with the knowledge we gain, then we have wasted our study. Books can store information better than we can—what we we do that books cannot is interpret. So if one is not going to draw conclusions, then one might as well just leave the information in the texts.

Brandon Sanderson
There are two kinds of people in this world, son. Those who save lives, and those who take lives." "And what of those who protect and defend? Those who save lives by taking lives?" "That's like trying to stop a storm by blowing harder. Ridiculous. You can't protect by killing.

Brandon Sanderson
And so, does the destination matter? Or is it the path we take? I declare that no accomplishment has substance nearly as great as the road used to achieve it. We are not creatures of destinations. It is the journey that shapes us. Our callused feet, our backs strong from carrying the weight of our travels, our eyes open with the fresh delight of experiences lived.

Brandon Sanderson
Somebody has to start. Somebody has to step forward and do what is right, because it is right.

Brandon Sanderson
Men had always told Kaladin that he fought like nobody else. He'd felt it on the first day he'd picked up a quarterstaff, though Tukks's advice had helped him refine and channel what he could do. Kaladin had cared when he fought. He'd never fought empty or cold. He fought to keep his men alive

Brandon Sanderson