The Winter King Quotes

“But fate, as Merlin always taught us, is inexorable. Life is a jest of the Gods, Merlin liked to claim, and there is no justice. You must learn to laugh, he once told me, or else you'll just weep yourself to death.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“I do understand that you can look into someone’s eyes,” I heard myself saying, “and suddenly know that life will be impossible without them. Know that their voice can make your heart miss a beat and that their company is all your happiness can ever desire and that their absence will leave your soul alone, bereft and lost.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“The bards sing of love, they celebrate slaughter, they extol kings and flatter queens, but were I a poet I would write in praise of friendship.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“Fate is inexorable.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“If you can master me, that look seemed to say, then you can master whatever else this wicked world might bring. I can see her now, standing amidst her deerhounds that had the same thin, lean bodies, and the same long nose and the same huntess eyes as their mistress. Green eyes, she had, with a kind of cruelty deep inside them. It was not a soft face, any more that her body was soft. She was a woman of strong lines and high bones, and that made for a good face and a handsome one, but hard, so hard. What made her beautiful was her hair and her carriage, for she stood as straight as spear and her hair fell around her shoulders like a cascade of tumbling red tangles. That red hair softened her looks, while her laughter snared men like salmon caught in basket traps. There have been many more beautiful women, and thousands who were better, but since the world was weaned I doubt there have been many more so unforgettable as Guinevere, eldest daughter of Leodegan, the exiled King of Henis Wyren.
And it would have been better, Merlin always said, had she been drowned at birth.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“How much of our earth has been wet by blood because of jealousy! And at the end of life, what does it all matter? We grow old and the young look at us and can never see that once we made a kingdom ring for love.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“Madness ends sometimes. The Gods decree it, not man.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“One of the things I can’t stand about Christians is their admiration of meekness. Imagine elevating meekness into a virtue! Meekness! Can you imagine a heaven filled only with the meek? What a dreadful idea. The food would get cold while everyone passed the dishes to everyone else. Meekness is no good, Derfel. Anger and selfishness, those are the qualities that make the world march.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“To ask another man’s blessing is simply to avoid taking the responsibility.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“.....It's funny, but your parents can give you everything in the world, but they can't teach you what to do with it. That, you have to learn for yourself.”
― Amanda Carpenter, The Winter King

“Os bardos cantam sobre o amor e sobre como as mulheres desejam o amor, mas ninguém sabe o que ele é até que, como uma lança atirada do escuro, ele acerta.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“You're not a Christian, are you?"

"No."

"You should consider it. We may not offer too many earthly delights, but our lives after death are certainly worth having.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“I believe the Gods hate to be bored, so I do my best to amuse them. That way they smile on me. Your God,’ Merlin said sourly, ‘despises amusement, demanding grovelling worship instead. He must be a very sorry creature.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“Are all Dumnonian warriors so ill-mannered?" she asked the table at large in an acid voice.

"You want warriors to be courtiers?" Celwin retorted brusquely. "You'd send your precious poets to kill the Franks? And I don't mean by reciting their verses at them, though come to think of it that might be quite effective." He leered at the Queen and the three poets shuddered.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“Poor Uther. He believed that virtues are handed down through a man's loins! What nonsense! A child is like a calf; if the thing is born crippled you knock it smartly on the skull and serve the cow again. That's why the Gods made it such a pleasure to engender children, because so many of the little brutes have to be replaced. There's not much pleasure in the process for women, of course, but someone has to suffer and
thank the Gods it's them and not us.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“The sword was called Kaledvoulc'h, which means hard lightning, though Igraine prefers to call it Excaliber, and I shall call it so as well because Arthur never cared what name his longsword carried. Nor, did he care about his childhood, for certainly I never heard him speak of it. I once questioned him about his early days and he would not answer. “What is the egg to the eagle?” he asked me, then said that he had been born, he had lived, and he had become a soldier, and that was all I needed to know.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“The individual act of will is the strongest, most transcendent part of us. To look upon something with our deepest overriding passions, whether it be rage, grief, hope or love, and yet recognise a greater need or goal, and to say, "I will do this" or "I will not do that", no matter what the personal cost, is a triumph of the spirit. The exercise of the will is the art of humans in the state of being.'
--”
― Amanda Carpenter, The Winter King

“Dizem que este Deus (deus cristão) é do perdão. Melhor ofender um desses do que qualquer outro.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“I want it to be the poet's Camelot: green grass and high towers and ladies in gowns and warriors strewing their paths with flowers. I want minstrels and laughter! Wasn't it ever like that?"
"A little," I said, "though I don't remember many flowery paths. I do recall the warriors limping out of battle, and some of them crawling and weeping with their guts trailing behind them in the dust.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“A vida é uma brincadeira dos deuses e não existe justiça. Você precisa aprender a rir ou então vai simplesmente chorar até morrer.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“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, The Winter King: A Novel of Arthur

“Assim que você escreve alguma coisa ela se torna fixa. Vira dogma. As pessoas passam a discutir a respeito, ficam autoritárias, referem-se aos textos, produzem manuscritos, discutem mais e logo estão matando umas às outras. Se você nunca escreve nada, ninguém sabe exatamente o que disse, de modo que sempre pode mudar.”
― Bernard Cornwell, O rei do inverno

“That man is my Arthur, a great warlord and a hero who fought against impossible odds to such effect that even fifteen hundred years later his enemies love and revere his memory.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“I know I have gained Christ and through His blessing I have gained the whole world too, but for what I have lost, for what we have all lost, there is no end to the reckoning. We lost everything.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“Nor did he care about his childhood, for certainly I never heard him speak of it. I once questioned him about his early days and he would not answer. ‘What is the egg to the eagle?’ he asked me…”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“Madness has a purpose! It’s a gift from the Gods, and like all their gifts it comes with a price,”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King: A Novel of Arthur

“To fight battles, Derfel,’ he corrected me, ‘on behalf of people who can’t fight for themselves. I learned that in Brittany. This miserable world is full of weak people, powerless people, hungry people, sad people, sick people, poor people, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to despise the weak,”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“And then the horn sounded. The horn gave a clear, cold note like none I had ever heard before. There was a purity to that horn, a chill hard purity like nothing else on all the earth. It sounded once, it sounded twice, and the second call was enough to give even the naked men pause and make them turn towards the east from where the sound had come. I looked too. And I was dazzled. It was as though a new bright sun had risen on that dying day. The light slashed over the pastures, blinding us, confusing us, but then the light slid on and I saw it was merely the reflection of the real sun glancing from a shield polished bright as a mirror. But that shield was held by such a man as I had never seen before; a man magnificent, a man lifted high on a great horse and accompanied by other such men; a horde of wondrous men, plumed men, armoured men, men sprung from the dreams of the Gods to come to this murderous field, and over the men’s plumed heads there floated a banner I would come to love more than any banner on all God’s earth. It was the banner of the bear. The horn sounded a third time, and suddenly I knew I would live, and I was weeping for joy and all our spearmen were half crying and half shouting and the earth was shuddering with the hooves of those Godlike men who were riding to our rescue. For Arthur, at last, had come.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

“And at the end of life, what does it all matter? We grow old and the young look at us and can never see that once we made a kingdom ring for love.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King: A Novel of Arthur

“Morgan was Uther’s natural daughter, the first of the four bastards the High King had whelped on Igraine of Gwynedd”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King