Quotes from R. Scott Bakker

Here we see philosophy brought to what is, in fact, a precarious position, which should be made fast even though it is supported by nothing in either heaven or earth. Here philosophy must show its purity as the absolute sustainer of its laws, and not as a herald of laws which implanted sense or who knows what tutelary nature whispers to it. –IMMANUEL KANT, FOUNDATIONS

Piety was simple, and the World, woefully complex. What was virtuous, what was holy: these were verities that only the simple and the enslaved could know with certainty.

You hoard your pain because the more you suffer, the more the world becomes an outrage. You weep because weeping has become evidence. 'See what you've done to me!' you cry. And you hold court night after night, condemning the circumstances that have condemned you by reliving your anguish. You torment yourself, Leweth, in order to hold the world accountable for your torment.

What is practicality but one moment betrayed for the next? —

War is intellect.

For Nautzera there was no present, only the clamour of a harrowing past and the threat of a corresponding future. For Nautzera, the present had receded to a point, had become the precarious fulcrum whereby history leveraged destiny. A mere formality.

Some say men continually war against circumstances, but I say they perpetually flee. What are the works of men if not a momentary respite, a hiding place soon to be discovered by catastrophe? Life is endless flight before the hunter we call the world. —EKYANNUS VIII, 111 APHORISMS Spring

Kings never lie. They demand the world be mistaken.

One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten. Heartbroken

Achamian had felt more than faintly alienated by this talk, as so often happened when confronted by another's excessive enthusiasm.

Power, she had come to realize, had the insidious habit of inserting others between you and your tasks, rendering your limbs little more than decorative mementoes of a more human past.

If we're nothing more than our thoughts and passions, and if our thoughts and passions are nothing more than movements of our souls, then we are nothing more than those who move us. Who you once were, Leweth, ceased to exist the moment your wife died.

Few things were as incalculable as men who were at once stupid and thin-skinned.

A sorcerer and a harlot . . . There's something sad about that." He grasped her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers. "There's something sad about all couples," he said.

Desperation glares in all Men, but it burns as a beacon when it takes a King for tinder. A

Dreams drawn from the sheath.

No soul moves alone through the world, Leweth. Our every thought stems from the thoughts of others. Our every word is but a repetition of words spoken before. Every time we listen, we allow the movements of another soul to carry our own." He paused, cutting short his reply in order to bewilder the man. Insight struck with so much more force when it clarified confusion. "This is truly why you fled to Sobel, Leweth.

You understand little because to learn you must admit you know nothing.

Zsoronga, Sorweel was beginning to realize, possessed the enviable ability to yoke his conviction to his need — to believe, absolutely, whatever his heart required. For Sorweel, belief and want always seemed like ropes too short to bind together, forcing him to play the knot as a result.

She led a submerged life, a life catacombed by poverty and ignorance

We make a sad couple," she said, as though making a casual observation. "Why would you say that?" "A sorcerer and a harlot . . . There's something sad about that." He grasped her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers. "There's something sad about all couples," he said.

Zealous men often confuse purity with intolerance, particularly when they're young.

Los pensamientos de todos los hombres surgen de la oscuridad. Si eres el movimiento de tu alma, y la causa de ese movimiento te precede, entonces, ¿cómo podrías llamar tuyos a tus pensamientos? ¿Cómo podrías ser otra cosa que un esclavo de la oscuridad que antecede a todo?

No, Leweth. You fled to remember. You fled to conserve all the ways your wife had moved you, to shield the ache of her loss from the momentum of others. You fled to make a bulwark of your misery.