Realm Of Thieves Quotes

Han stroked her hair, shifting his body under her. “Why? What are you afraid of? Thieves or wizards?” “Both,” she said. “Is it because I‟m not a blueblood?” He asked this matter-of-factly, as if he really wanted to know. “That‟s the least of it,” Raisa said, taking a shuddering breath. “This is just going to lead to heartbreak, and I refuse to have my heart broken again.” She looked up at him. “I thought I could play at love. I thought I had the right, same as — as any courtier or a — a streetlord.” He shook his head. “Rebecca, listen, I—” “But I‟ve found out I‟m not made that way,” she interrupted. “I can‟t play this game if my heart‟s not in it. That‟s me personally. I‟m not judging anyone else.” “I see,” he said. He tightened his arms around her, brushing his fingers along her collarbone, setting her nerves tingling. “What‟s your heart saying now?” She wanted to be honest with him, even though she‟d probably pay for it. “I‟m in trouble,” she whispered.

A man inferior with the blade or with his thoughts can still so elevate himself," Entreri explained curtly, "if he can impart the belief that some god or other speaks through him. It is the greatest deception in all the world and one embraced by kings and lords, while the minor lying thieves on the streets or Calimport and other cities lose their tongues for so attempting to coax the purses of others.

Ultimately, the claim goes to the strongest, does it not? In the final sort of things, I mean. He who remains alive, remains alive to write the histories in a light favorable to him and his cause. Surely as worldly as you are, you know well the histories of the world, Master Wingham. Surely you recognize that armies carrying banners are almost always thieves - until they win.

Brain-imaging studies and psychological testing indicate that the same areas are also impaired in drug addiction. And what is the result? If it wasn’t enough that powerful incentive and reward mechanisms drive the craving for drugs, on top of that the circuits that could normally inhibit and control those mechanisms are not up to their task. In fact, they are complicit in the addiction process. A double whammy: the watchman is aiding the thieves.

We like to keep what’s our own to keep, especially from little thieves with little fingers and big mouths.

The Scientific Revolution was revolutionary in a way that is hard to appreciate today, now that its discoveries have become second nature to most of us. The historian David Wootton reminds us of the understanding of an educated Englishman on the eve of the Revolution in 1600: He believes witches can summon up storms that sink ships at sea. . . . He believes in werewolves, although there happen not to be any in England—he knows they are to be found in Belgium. . . . He believes Circe really did turn Odysseus’s crew into pigs. He believes mice are spontaneously generated in piles of straw. He believes in contemporary magicians. . . . He has seen a unicorn’s horn, but not a unicorn. He believes that a murdered body will bleed in the presence of the murderer. He believes that there is an ointment which, if rubbed on a dagger which has caused a wound, will cure the wound. He believes that the shape, colour and texture of a plant can be a clue to how it will work as a medicine because God designed nature to be interpreted by mankind. He believes that it is possible to turn base metal into gold, although he doubts that anyone knows how to do it. He believes that nature abhors a vacuum. He believes the rainbow is a sign from God and that comets portend evil. He believes that dreams predict the future, if we know how to interpret them. He believes, of course, that the earth stands still and the sun and stars turn around the earth once every twenty-four hours.7 A century and a third later, an educated descendant of this Englishman would believe none of these things. It was an escape not just from ignorance but from terror. The sociologist Robert Scott notes that in the Middle Ages “the belief that an external force controlled daily life contributed to a kind of collective paranoia”: Rainstorms, thunder, lightning, wind gusts, solar or lunar eclipses, cold snaps, heat waves, dry spells, and earthquakes alike were considered signs and signals of God’s displeasure. As a result, the “hobgoblins of fear” inhabited every realm of life. The sea became a satanic realm, and forests were populated with beasts of prey, ogres, witches, demons, and very real thieves and cutthroats. . . . After dark, too, the world was filled with omens portending dangers of every sort: comets, meteors, shooting stars, lunar eclipses, the howls of wild animals.8 To the Enlightenment thinkers the escape from ignorance and superstition showed how mistaken our conventional wisdom could be, and how the methods of science—skepticism, fallibilism, open debate, and empirical testing—are a paradigm of how to achieve reliable knowledge. That knowledge includes an understanding of ourselves.

If we assess the results of this swift foray into the ancient Celtic literature, we can conclude the following: dwarfs are handsome or ugly, hostile or helpful, sometimes thieves or kidnappers. They inhabit kingdoms that are located on islands, in lakes, or in the sea, or are even underground. They live in communities there that are headed by a king. They celebrate festivals, play music, ride small horses, possess magical objects, and have supernatural powers. It appears they are excellent craftsmen. It is important that we underscore the fact that this image of the dwarf owes much to the romances, and the ancient features it contains no longer hold any value. It is obvious that there are several races of dwarfs—as the terms corr and afanc attest—who are deeply entangled with the otherworld, which does not seem to be restricted only to the land of Faery, and on this point the Celtic dwarfs and the dwarfs of the romances are opposites. But through the channel of the Matter of Britain, a veritable bridge set down between the Celtic world and the Romance world, certain peculiarities of these dwarfs from green Ireland and Wales have crossed over into France and combined with other motifs—motifs which, in this case, stem from the Germanic world.

Dwarfs experience the same passions as men, especially the torments of love and the goad of ambition. They wage war among themselves to conquer other hollow mountains. They have hereditary enemies in the form of giants and dragons. Their amusements correspond thoroughly to those of the human world: they love music, singing, dancing, good meals washed down with wine or mead; they organize jousts and tourneys on the green meadows that extend before their underground palaces; and finally, they know how to speak courteously. The great majority of dwarfs are well meaning and helpful; it is only in the Arthurian romances—in agreement with romance literature in general on this point—that we find portrayals of treacherous or thieving dwarfs.

You came to us outlaws,' he began, 'poachers, rapers, debtors, killers, and thieves. You came to us children. You came to us alone, in chains, with neither friends nor honor. You came to us rich, and you came to us poor. Some of you bear the names of proud houses. Others have only bastards’ names, or no names at all. It makes no matter. All that is past now. On the Wall, we are all one house. 'At evenfall, as the sun sets and we face the gathering night, you shall take your vows. From that moment, you will be a Sworn Brother of the Night’s Watch. Your crimes will be washed away, your debts forgiven. So too you must wash away your former loyalties, put aside your grudges, forget old wrongs and old loves alike. Here you begin anew. 'A man of the Night’s Watch lives his life for the realm. Not for a king, nor a lord, nor the honor of this house or that house, neither for gold nor glory nor a woman’s love, but for the realm, and all the people in it. A man of the Night’s Watch takes no wife and fathers no sons. Our wife is duty. Our mistress is honor. And you are the only sons we shall ever know.

And the other?” Braga asked. “The other what?” The king looked back and forth between the two. “The other reason you can’t appoint Simon as chancellor,” Leo reminded him. “Oh.” The king presented Braga with a wry smile. “Because I hate him. That’s why he’s such a pain. He really can’t get in any worse with his king. So he needles me and revels in his position of being one of the most powerful and disliked nobles in the realm. Worst thing about it is,” Amrath grumbled as he looked back out the window, “if I were to get into a scuffle with Warric, there are no two men I’d rather have at my side than Leo and Simon. It’s true that he hates me. Nothing personal—he just hates everyone, really. I’ve never met a more disagreeable codpiece. But he loves the kingdom. And while he may be misguided, arrogant, and ambitious beyond reason, he’s also tireless in his efforts to keep Melengar safe. That is why I appointed him lord high constable. I imagine there was a mass exodus of thieves and cutthroats the day of that announcement. But don’t worry, once you get to know Simon better, you’ll learn to truly despise him the way Leo and I do.

That blur of light that just zoomed past us, by the way, is Hermes. I don't like that boy—and not just because he is a son of Zeus. He's the one who brings my wife to the upper world when it's time for her to visit her mom, Demeter (deh-mee-ter). Because of that job, Hermes ended up escorting all the dead to my realm. Not like they needed an escort, but still. It gave the hyperactive, thieving godling something to do. (Yeah, he's the god of thieves, so of course he's Zeus's son.)

Opening yourself directly to the spiritual sources—be they evil or holy—is dangerous business. You risk opening the front door of your heart to forces as complicated and conflicted as the streets and prisons. (As inmates have made sure to remind me, regarding such environments: “Not everyone’s there to help you, Chris. You can get fucked up really quickly.” Those words, I think, apply to the unmediated spiritual realm.) But there’s an even greater danger. You risk making contact with a Love somewhere out there that is so pure, so good, it makes you feel more, hurt more, notice more, care more, makes you embarrassingly odd and terribly sensitive, welcoming strangers, touching the lepers like Francis in Assisi, or getting dragged to court and stuck with the death penalty between two thieves like Jesus did. Or—and this is most common—if you lose that connection that filled you like the sun, it can be a loss so disorienting that even the hope required for real prayer—someone suggesting you open up again, say, to God—can drive you mad. Any way you come at it, it’s a dangerous game.

Brahmin, once upon a time there was a king called Mahāvijita. He was rich, of great wealth and resources, with an abundance of gold and silver, of possessions and requisites, of money and money’s worth, with a full treasury and granary. And when King Mahāvijita was reflecting in private, the thought came to him: ‘I have acquired extensive wealth in human terms, I occupy a wide extent of land which I have conquered. Let me now make a great sacrifice that would be to my benefit and happiness for a long time.’ And calling his chaplain,13 he told him his thought. ‘I want to make a great sacrifice. Instruct me, venerable sir, how this may be to my lasting benefit and happiness.’ 11. “The chaplain replied: ‘Your Majesty’s country is beset by thieves. It is ravaged; villages and towns are being destroyed; the countryside is infested with brigands. If Your Majesty were to tax this region, that would be the wrong thing to do. Suppose Your Majesty were to think: “I will get rid of this plague of robbers by executions and imprisonment, or by confiscation, threats, and banishment,” the plague would not be properly ended. Those who survived would later harm Your Majesty’s realm. However, with this plan you can completely eliminate the plague. To those in the kingdom who are engaged in cultivating crops and raising cattle, let Your Majesty distribute grain and fodder; to those in trade, give capital; to those in government service assign proper living wages. Then those people, being intent on their own occupations, will not harm the kingdom. Your Majesty’s revenues will be great; the land will be tranquil and not beset by thieves; and the people, with joy in their hearts, playing with their children, will dwell in open houses.’ “And saying: ‘So be it!,’ the king accepted the chaplain’s advice: he gave grain and fodder to those engaged in cultivating crops and raising cattle, capital to those in trade, proper living wages to those in government service. Then those people, being intent on their own occupations, did not harm the kingdom. The king’s revenues became great; the land was tranquil and not beset by thieves; and the people, with joy in their hearts, playing with their children, dwelled in open houses.

We are all thieves of one kind or another.

I was once his captive, then his thief, and now I am only his.

Tell me where you stand.” He takes in a deep breath and runs his thumb over my lips. “I stand where you stand. And you stand at the forefront of my life. Everything else falls to the wayside. Every thought, every feeling, it revolves around you, like you’ve embedded yourself under my skin, deep enough that I couldn’t get you out even if I tried.

What I really want more than anything is to matter to you. To be something to you, to be everything to you.” He pauses, swallowing hard. “I want to be your better tomorrow.” My eyes fall closed, my heart tumbling in my chest at his words. “I want that too,” I whisper. Which is why this whole thing has caught me off guard. Hope can be such a dangerous thing when it’s all you have left. “Then let me,” he says, running his hands through my hair. “Let me be your better tomorrow. Let me be whatever it is that you need me to be. Please.

Non sono mai stata una brava ragazza, e non comincerò certo con te.

In the heart, there is no sting greater than watching the struggles of one you love, knowing that only through such strife will that person grow and recognize the potential of his or her existence. Too many thieves in the Realms believe the formula for happiness lies in an unguarded treasure trove. Too many wizards seek to circumvent the years of study required for true power. They find a spell on a scroll or an enchanted item that is far beyond their understanding, yet they try it anyway, only to be consumed by the powerful magic. Too many priests in the Realms, and too many religious sects in general, ask of themselves and of their congregations only humble servitude. All of them are doomed to fail in the true test of happiness. There is one ingredient missing in stumbling upon an unguarded treasure hoard; there is one element absent when a minor wizard lays his hands on an archmages staff; there is one item unaccounted for in humble, unquestioning, and unambitious servitude. A sense of accomplishment. It is the most important ingredient in any rational being’s formula of happiness. It is the element that builds confidence and allows us to go on to other, greater tasks. It is the item that promotes a sense of self-worth, that allows any person to believe there is value in life itself, that gives a sense of purpose to bolster us as we face life’s unanswerable questions.