{"author":"Bernard Cornwell","author_id":"Bernard+Cornwell","total_quotes":55,"quotes":[{"text":"The preachers tell us that pride is a great sin, but the preachers are wrong. Pride makes a man, it drives him, it is the shield wall around his reputation... Men die, they said, but reputation does not die.","author":"Bernard Cornwell","tags":["preachers","pride","reputation","shield-wall"],"id":328,"author_id":"Bernard+Cornwell"},{"text":"Folk tell their children that success lies in working hard and being thrifty, but that is as much nonsense as supposing that a badger, a fox and a wolf could build a church. The way to wealth is to become a Christian bishop or a monastery's abbot and thus be imbued with heaven's permission to lie, cheat and steal your way to luxury.","author":"Bernard Cornwell","tags":["christianity","immorality","religion","success"],"id":7907,"author_id":"Bernard+Cornwell"},{"text":"Lord Derfel, you do insult a man so very easily. What was it to be? My head in a pit dunged by slaves? What a paltry imagination you do have. Mine, I fear, sometimes seems excessive, even to me.","author":"Bernard Cornwell","tags":["imagination"],"id":8680,"author_id":"Bernard+Cornwell"},{"text":"You will not say how you are haunted by the faces of the men you killed, how in their last gasp of life they sought your pity and you had none. You will not speak of the boys who died screaming for their mothers while you twisted a blade in their guts and snarled your scorn into their ears. You will not confess that you wake in the night, covered in sweat, heart hammering, shrinking from the memories. You will not talk of that, because that is the horror, and the horror is held in the heart’s hoard, a secret, and to admit it is to admit fear, and we are warriors.We do not fear. We strut. We go to battle like heroes. We stink of shit.","author":"Bernard Cornwell","tags":["battle","fear","heroes","horror","secret","shit","warriors"],"id":21963,"author_id":"Bernard+Cornwell"},{"text":"Gods fight, Ragnar went on earnestly, and some win, some lose. The Christian god is losing. Otherwise why would we be here? Why would we be winning? The gods reward us if we give them respect, but the Christian god doesn't help his people, does he? They weep rivers of tears for him, they pray to him, they give him their silver, \u0026 we come along \u0026 slaughter them! Their god is pathetic. If he had any real power then we wouldn't be here, would we?","author":"Bernard Cornwell","tags":["god","gods","religion-christianity"],"id":39925,"author_id":"Bernard+Cornwell"},{"text":"It's better to make the wrong choice,' my father had continued, 'than to make no choice at all.","author":"Bernard Cornwell","tags":["better","choice","father","make","wrong"],"id":49291,"author_id":"Bernard+Cornwell"},{"text":"Men do not relish the shield wall. They do not rush to death's embrace. You look ahead and see the overlapping shields, the helmets, the glint of axes and spears and swords, and you know you must go into the reach of those blades, into the place of death, and it takes time to summon the courage, to heat the blood, to let the madness overtake caution.","author":"Bernard Cornwell","tags":["battle","shield-wall","uhtred","war"],"id":50163,"author_id":"Bernard+Cornwell"},{"text":"But when you have order, you don't need Gods. When everything is well ordered and disciplined then nothing is unexpected. If you understand everything,' I said carefully, 'then there's no room left for magic. It's only when you're lost and frightened and in the dark that you call on the Gods, and they like us to call on them. It makes them feel powerful, and that's why they like us to live in chaos.","author":"Bernard Cornwell","tags":["chaos","gods"],"id":54760,"author_id":"Bernard+Cornwell"},{"text":"So we rode through a broken gate in a broken wall into a broken town, and it was dusk, and the day's rain had finally lifted, and a shaft of red sunlight came from beneath the western clouds as we entered the ruined town. We rode straight into the light of that swollen sun which reflected from my helm that had the silver wolf on its crest, and it shone from my mail coat and from my arm rings and from the hilts of my two swords, and someone shouted that I was the king. I rode Witnere, who tossed his great head and pawed at the ground, and I was dressed in my shining war glory.","author":"Bernard Cornwell","tags":["historical-fiction"],"id":58385,"author_id":"Bernard+Cornwell"},{"text":"The war was between the Danes and Wessex. My war was with Odda the Younger, and I knew I was driven by pride. The preachers tell us that pride is a great sin, but the preachers are wrong. Pride makes a man, it drives him. It’s the shield wall around his reputation and the Danes understood that. Men die they said, but reputation does not die. What do we look for in a lord? Strength, generosity, hardness, and success. And why should a man not be proud of those things? Show me a humble warrior and I’ll see a corpse. Alfred preached humility, he even pretended to it, loving to appear in church with bare feet and prostrating himself in-front the alter, but he never possessed true humility. He was proud, and men feared him because of it, and men should fear a lord. They should fear his displeasure and fear his generosity will cease. Reputation makes fear, and pride protects reputation, and I marched North because my pride was endangered.","author":"Bernard Cornwell","tags":["pride"],"id":95320,"author_id":"Bernard+Cornwell"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":55,"pages":6,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}