Read through the most famous quotes by topic #dam
[I]t was with a good end in mind – that of acquiring the knowledge of good and evil – that Eve allowed herself to be carried away and eat the forbidden fruit. But Adam was not moved by this desire for knowledge, but simply by greed: he ate it because he heard Eve say it tasted good. ↗
Damen felt Laurent start shaking against him, and realised that, silently, helplessly, he was laughing. [...] 'This is the tavern prostitute. You idiot, the Prince of Vere is so celibate I doubt he even touches himself once every ten years. You. We're looking for two men. One was a barbarian soldier, a giant animal. The other was blond. Not like this boy. Attractive.' 'There was a blond lord's pet downstairs,' said Volo. 'Brained like a pea and easy to hoodwink. I don't think he was the Prince.' 'I wouldn't call him blond. More like mousy. And he wasn't that attractive,' said the boy, sulkily. The shaking, progressively, had worsened. 'Stop enjoying yourself,' Damen murmured. 'We're going to be killed, any minute.' 'Giant animal,' said Laurent. 'Stop it. ↗
Call it what you like: The Upper Sky, the Unmade, even the Empyrean. Men have given it so many names over the course of history. But those names don't really matter, in the end. It's the unchanging matter. A place without qualities. Neither hot nor cold, wet nor dry. The aether remains while all else shifts and fades...The aether is the opposite of creation. It's always there, invisible but burning bright. It's the pale web that holds the universe together. ↗
You broke a man today. Doesn't that affect you at all? These are lives, not pieces in a chess game with your uncle.' 'You're wrong. We are on my uncle's board and these men are all his pieces.' 'Then each time you move one of them, you can congratulate yourself on how much like him you are. ↗
A minute or two more and Orlant disengaged, and swore. 'Are you going to fight me or not?' You said we were sparring,' said Damen, neutrally. Orlant flung down his sword, took two steps off to one of the watching men, and pulled from its sheath thirty inches of polished steel straightsword, which without preamble he returned to swing with killing speed at Damen's neck. ↗
The shock of collision was like the smashing of boulders in the landslide at Nesson. Damen felt the familiar battering shudder, the sudden shift in scale as the panorama of the charge was abruptly replaced by the slam of muscle against metal, of horse and man impacting at speed. Nothing could be heard over the crashing, the roars of men, both sides warping and threatening to rupture, regular lines and upright banners replaced by a heaving, struggling mass. Horses slipped, then regained their footing; others fell, slashed or speared through. ↗
He killed, his sword shearing, shield and horse a ram, pushing in, and further in, opening a space by force alone for the momentum of the men behind him. Beside him a man fell to a spear in the throat. To his left, an equine scream as Rochert's horse went down. In front of him, methodically, men fell, and fell, and fell. He split his attention. He swept a sword cut aside with his shield, killed a helmed soldier, and all the while flung out his mind, waiting for the moment when Touar's lines split open. The most difficult part of commanding from the front was this--staying alive in the moment, while tracking in his mind, critically, the whole fight. Yet it was exhilarating, like fighting with two bodies, at two scales. ↗
#commanding #damen #war #men
It is often said that mankind needs a faith if the world is to be improved. In fact, unless the faith is vigilantly and regularly checked by a sense of man's fallibility, it is likely to make the world worse. From Torquemada to Robespierre and Hitler the men who have made mankind suffer the most have been inspired to do so have been inspired to do so by a strong faith; so strong that it led them to think their crimes were acts of virtue necessary to help them achieve their aim, which was to build some sort of an ideal kingdom on earth. ↗
