Quotes from Bernard Cornwell

I have learned that it is one thing to kill in battle, to send a brave man's soul to the corpse hall of the gods, but quite another to take a helpless man's life...

Calix meus inebrians.

Religion makes strange bedfellows.

Only a fool takes pride in pretending that a skill he doesn't possess is worthless.

Arrows of insight have to be winged by the feathers of speculation.

Wyrd bið ful ?ræd. Fate is inexorable. We are given power and we lose it.

We should know who they are, I said, before we kill them. That's just being polite.

I had fought so long and so hard for my home. It had been stolen from me when I was a child, and I had fought the length and breadth of Britain to regain it. And now I must fight for Bebbanburg again. We would ride for home.

History is not just a tale of men's making, but is a thing tied to the land. We call a hill by the name of a hero who died there, or name a river after a princess who fled beside its banks, and when the old names vanish, the stories go with them and the new names carry no reminder of the past.

When rumours fly, when false tales are being told, be the storyteller.

I had no idea what I was speaking of, but only knew I must sound confident. Fear might work on a man, but confidence fights against fear. Odda

He wanted to improve the world, while I did not believe and never have believed that we can improve the world, just merely survive as it slides into chaos.

Shun epic verse.

She was as faithful as a morning mist, as hard as a sword-bayonet, and that, he thought, made her a suitable reward for a soldier.

War is fought in mystery. The truth can take days to travel, and ahead of truth flies rumor, and it is ever hard to know what is really happening, and the art of it is to pluck the clean bone of fact from the rotting flesh of fear and lies.

I liked those tales. They were better than my stepmother's stories of Cuthbert's miracles. Christians, it seemed to me, were forever weeping and I did not think Woden's worshippers cried much.

I was screaming and hitting at him, but he thought it all so very funny, and he draped me belly down on the saddle in front of him and then he spurred into the chaos to continue the killing. And that was how I met Ragnar, Ragnar the Fearless, my brother's killer, and the man whose head was supposed to grace a pole on Bebbanburg's ramparts, Earl Ragnar.

The Immortals were about to engage the Impregnable. The unbeaten would fight the unbeatable.

I am Uhtred, son of Uhtred, and this is the tale of a blood feud. It is a tale of how I will take from my enemy what the law says is mine. And it is the tale of a woman and of her father, a king. He was my king and all that I have I owe to him. The food that I eat, the hall where I live, and the swords of my men, all came from Alfred, my king, who hated me.

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.

It takes a weak man to prove his strength by striking a woman.

Enemies come soon enough in a mans life,' he told me, 'you don't need to seek them out

Robin Hood's Lament"?' Every archer knew that tune.

Love's madness, swinging from ecstasy to despair in one wild second.