Wurt Quotes

When hope dies, you breathe it back to life again! No matter how long it takes, or what time's required to heal the wound. Disappointment will not last a lifetime unless you lie down and give in.

An illusion threatens no one with harm. Neither can it be dispelled by armed force.

Show me a hero and I’ll show you a man enslaved by his competence.

The miracle left him dumbfounded, that his heart had not yet shirked its weary task of pumping his bored blood through his brain.

Mage-taught wisdom reproached him: any gift of power was two-edged.

How much suffering did you lay on yourself before you awakened and recognized that guilt is deadly, and empty, and profitless?

Were you going to tell me you usually kiss your one-night trollops in private?" He laughed. The free-ringing sound held a spark of pure pleasure, unforced and rich with surprise.

It’s tragic how the lack of imagination so often shapes our defeat.

No driven man hears unwanted counsel.

Death has no repeal. It is a brute ending that leaves us the legacy of an inscrutable silence. Therefore, I understand the voice of mercy very well.

Does vengeance or blame ease the sorrow of heart-ache? We all make mistakes. Life can’t be lived without harm to others.

Mockery is the sure mark of the cynic, unredeemed and cut off from salvation.

An act made in fear is not the same thing as an action taken for necessity.

The same sages also wrote that violence is the habit of the weak, the impotent and the fool.

As a spirit schooled to power, his perception stems from one absolute. Universal harmony begins with recognition that the life in an ordinary pebble is as sacred as conscious selfhood.

My grandfather was sparing in his praise of apprentices. My grandfather insisted we think for ourselves and achieve for our own satisfaction. Deep study of the mysteries were their own tough path, he always said. To live for the approval of others was a pitfall that begged a false turning.

Damn you," said Arithon. In a shattering change of mood, he was laughing. "You have it. But what's my word against the grandiloquent predictions of a maudlin and drunken prophet?" "Maybe everything," Felirin finished gently. "You're too young to live without dreams.

The rebuke came, keen-edged. ‘Trusting the man is not the same thing as knowing what he’s about.

Never get old. It's a ridiculously uncomfortable process Ath Creator should be made to find a cure for.

Truth, of itself, does not kill.

Hate has no ears.

All things were formed of energy, arrangements of bundled light that were subject to natural law. The awareness of this truth, defined to absolute perfection, granted the mage-trained their influence. To know a thing, to encompass its full measure in respect was to hold its secrets in mastery. Life-force was the basis of all power.

Let her own shortfalls, and not your vindictive perfectionism, be the quality that throws her to destruction.

What is any war but a massacre?

Does imagination or joy come with limits?

There's a choice?" "Always. It's the outcome that sadly limits things.

There are many reasons to avoid taking risks. Friendship is not among them.

Speak for yourself. Only rank ignorance measures a man by appearances.

Some gifts of friendship cannot be earned, no matter how hard we try to live up to them.

I would sooner converse with a snake!" He side-stepped the clutter. "Speak and have done. Even snakes prefer their choice of company.

You don’t have to like a man to respect him.

Loyalty," he stated, ineffably gentle. "A quality honoured by sages and fools, by which humankind finds the courage to trample the reflex for self-preservation.

I shall try. At best, I am human. No less subject than any to mortal limits and fallible resource.

Because you’ve survived, there is a next strategy.

Show me a hero and I'll show you a man enslaved by his competence.

You can't let your past write the future

There is no terror so powerful as the one never faced.

What is a flaw but a human mistake, or an ignorance that sees without options?

A man wreaks harm because he forgets to love peace. He kills because of self-blinded fear, that imagines no other protection.

How often ignorance stings less than knowledge.

A bad king revels in his importance. A good one hates his office. He spends himself into infirmity quashing deadly little plots to make power the tool of the greedy.

There’s an alternate view. That no man or woman alive is the disempowered victim of another’s degrading circumstance. Each is equipped to pursue their own fate. No one needs saving.

I prefer the simpler reality, that the means to uplift the unfortunate are better controlled from the council chamber. A man can feed the hungry and clothe beggars all his life and not change the conditions that make them wretched.

Well your full of cow pies up to your ears! I don't give way on the orders of rabble, or bow to Devall's uppity marshal. He can stuff his gold braid! Yes, up his tight arse where it will hurt the most, for all that I care for his posturing! These wagons will pass. Afterwards, you can shoot all the crossbolts you like, and ram yourselves straight to oblivion!

the resolution of the great West Gate Prophecy.

Prudence, my prophet,’ the sorcerer rebuked. ‘The results of prophecies often resolve through strangely twisted circumstance.’ But if Asandir was yet aware that the promised talents were split between princes who were enemies with blood debts of seven generations, he said nothing.

The wisest of sages have said that a man will choose violence out of fear." The Master's words were expressive, but cold, and directed toward the King. "Is your stature so mean that you dare not face me without fetters?

You're analysing the nature of the universe, based on one view through a keyhole.

The grievous burden of remorse shouted shame, that a criminally blind ideology could reject the promise of birthright, then mangle the exuberant vigour of life, designed by nature to celebrate only creative abundance.

Prophets are dastardly pessimists, to a man.

I should be impressed?’ he commented finally. ‘World renowned for foul works and mayhem, whether I practise such doctrine, or not? A shame. Shown such vulgar taste, what man with a mind would scarcely wallow to seek further clarity. Sweet faith, bliss, and bathos, it’s an execrable drama. Never mind that the theological concepts are glorified platitudes sprung out of lies.

What is our experience, but the reflected truth of our misapprehensions and short-falls? And also the grace of our beauty and strength, and the wise choices that make up our character?

Should we act on our unseen fears before the virtue of human kindness? Who’s given us more, the Light’s faith or that stranger? And if you choose to reject generosity, then what standing do we have left in this world, or in the hereafter, for that matter?

I say human beings have purposeful brains beyond acting like flocks of scared pigeons.

You cannot trust yourself,’ she agreed, bed-rock calm. ‘Therefore, let go. Seize life and place trust in me.

This is my present, also yours, free to choose. I am here at your side, alive, and no ghost. Let beauty and care forge the weapons tonight.

Against such odds, I will stand or fall! Whether or not I can rise to surmount the trials before me, I plan to step forward and fight.

Some gifts of friendship cannot be earned. They exist, beyond price, and we cannot hope to match up to them.

A soldier’s life is all grinding routine. Who sold you the rosy notion of honour, trumped up in bright flags and glory? We’re here to burn barley. Tossing a torch takes a damned sight less practice than trenching hard ground with a spade.

I always listen," the duke said, annoyed. "Just hang your silly, unnatural notion, that hearing means following your orders.

Doubt packs more damage, kept secret.

I pity the man who can’t cry.

But a parcel of walled soil does not make the heart of a ruler or define the nobility of a people!

There are no victims, now. While we survive, for as long as we love, our future is yet to be written.

I trust you," she murmured through urgency. "Completely. Without end, and before the beginning.

Look at yourself, idiot. You reek like the slaughter-house. Plan your dastard’s revenge as you like. But for those of us liking our company civilized, spare us the horror and bathe yourself first!

But hope always kindles through striving.

You are not mine to command. But the choice to kill always means closing the mind to the chance of a living alternative.

Fanatics don’t choose to stop blinding themselves. His Lordship’s more at risk of becoming the figure-head steered by the needs of the mob." "What man who leads a pack of followers isn't?

Your prim faith in the True Sect’s canon serves naught. The temple preaches a loveless morality that cares not one jot for the plight of our livelihood. The priests are fat parasites, theosophizing on their rumps while folk like us break our backs, milked dry by their tithes and their rote obligations. Where does their doctrine show the least concern for our chance to enjoy the fruits of our happiness?

Is my love so small that I cannot let him discover anew what happiness life has to offer?

Done without love, any congress between man and woman degrades the creative intelligence that graces your humanity.

You always did like to run things, never mind your crafty knack for making everyone believe that somebody else was in charge.

Since you refused the good grace to die on delivery, Rathain has got a living prince.

Sithaer's dark furies," Dakar swore. "Why do I stay with you?" "For maudlin entertainment, no doubt.

You know, that's the trouble with drinking. Come the morning, you can never remember their names.

Did I mention any name?" But dissembling was wasted; Eldir only glowered until Sethvir gave way with a shrug. "That's the part of his personality that makes us all feel like we've been kissing coiled vipers for a penny bet.

The fugitive hours were her enemy.

Lysaer managed a stumbling step. When his senses cleared from the explosion, his eyes beheld a vista of nightmare.

The shadows’ geas bound the mind to madness: already Athera’s hope of renewed sunlight might be ruined. Sharp words prodded the Mad Prophet back to awareness.

Lysaer’s knees buckled. Arithon caught him as he fell. Barriers abandoned, he locked both arms around his half-brother and threw himself at the bright, mercurial shimmer of the Gate.

When the first reedy snore escaped the Mad Prophet’s lips, Asandir’s forbidding manner softened. His fingers smoothed black hair from a profile all too familiar, and his smile widened with amusement. ’So, our Prophet thinks you a servant, does he?

How had a royal son of s’Ffalenn come by the abuse so cruelly marked into youthful flesh? The sight was an offence. Dascen Elur must have changed drastically in the years since the Fellowship sealed the Worldsend Gate for the cause of Athera’s drowned sunlight.

Arithon; the word brought Asandir to sharp attention. Whoever had named this prince had known what they were about, for the Paravian root of meaning was ‘forger’, not of metals, but of destiny.

Descended of royal lines older than Dascen Elur’s archives, Arithon was the last living heir to the High Kingship of Rathain, a land divided in strife since the Mistwraith had drowned the sky.

Athera could ill afford the consequence if the Mistwraith that afflicted the world was ever to yield its hold on sunlight.

Light,’ said Asandir, ‘and shadow, granted intact upon conception. That’s enough to destroy the Mistwraith, but only if the half-brothers work jointly.

A masterbard's given duty was to ease the hearts of the bereaved.

Arithon lent a disarming appearance of frailty. Beneath wind-flicked tangles of dark hair, his expression reflected the careless ennui of high-breeding, the features, sharp-faceted marble.

Sometimes there are no victims to save, and nothing is broken that should be fixed.

Talith confronted the self-contained prince she recalled much too clearly from the tumultuous events that surrounded a failed coronation.

The curse that afflicted this scion of s'Ilessid had become everything the Fellowship of the Seven had warned and worse.

Because the factual account lay hopelessly entangled between legend and theology, sages in the seventh age meditated upon the ancient past, and recalled through visions the events as they happened. Contrary to all expectation, the conflict did not begin on the council stair of Etarra, nor even on the soil of Athera itself; instead the visions started upon the wide oceans of the splinter world, Dascen Elur. This is the chronicle the sages recovered. Let each who reads determine the good and the evil for himself.

The Wars of Light and Shadow were fought during the third age of Athera, the most troubled and strife-filled era recorded in all of history. At that time Arithon, called Master of Shadow, battled the Lord of Light through five centuries of bloody and bitter conflict. If the canons of the religion founded during that period are reliable, the Lord of Light was divinity incarnate, and the Master of Shadow a servant of evil, spinner of dark powers. Temple archives attest with grandiloquent force to be the sole arbiters of truth

Yet contrary evidence supports a claim that the Master was unjustly aligned with evil. Fragments of manuscript survive which expose the entire religion of Light as fraud, and award Arithon the attributes of saint and mystic instead.