Jacob Peppers > Quotes

“In the words of a once great general,” he said, “When all choices are shitty, a man must pick the one most likely to leave him alive to wash.”
― Jacob Peppers, A Sellsword's Compassion

“Too many folk,” the Parnen continued, apparently oblivious of Aaron’s reaction, “these days worry only about the present. It is a worrisome trait. Still, if one only worries about the present, and the future will soon be the present, is one not worrying about both at the same time?” He rubbed at his chin thoughtfully, “An interesting question, isn’t it?”
― Jacob Peppers, A Sellsword's Compassion

“Tastes like water, but it’ll make your dick grow five inches.”
― Jacob Peppers, A Sellsword's Valor

“The only unnatural thing is that he’s still breathing.”
― Jacob Peppers, A Sellsword's Valor

“In this way, men and women felt that they prayed to gods who cared specifically about their concerns, and their problems. Not that Aaron had ever seen any evidence, of course, but he understood the human need to categorize.”
― Jacob Peppers, A Sellsword's Compassion

“Fear has killed more men than all the swords and arrows ever made.”
― Jacob Peppers, A Sellsword's Compassion

“You are a man who follows his emotions, who reacts to the world around you, when what is needed is a man who guides his emotion, a man who leads and acts upon the world.”
― Jacob Peppers, A Sellsword's Mercy

“but a man could not suffer ghosts always, for they talked incessantly—there was, after all, nothing else that they might do.”
― Jacob Peppers, The Wandering Sword

“A king’s greatest challenge, the greatest challenge of all men, is to get back up. The world will knock you down, Bernard, and the higher a man rises the greater that fall may become. It will knock you down, and the greatest challenge you will face, when it does, is getting back up again.”
― Jacob Peppers, A Warrior's Penance

“In a bad world, a man’s goodness was not a shield on his arm—it was a target on his back. For that which was sour hated that which was sweet, for in its sweetness it served to underscore the other’s sourness.”
― Jacob Peppers, City of Steel and Shadow

“Now, though, he stood to lose everything. That had always been true, of course, for a man who has little might lose little and yet still lose all that he possesses.”
― Jacob Peppers, Requiem for a Soldier

“learned that a man without hope saved himself the agony of seeing that hope dashed before his eyes.”
― Jacob Peppers, Requiem for a Soldier

“conscious”
― Jacob Peppers, A Warrior's Burden

“After all, the tailor’s suffering was only a small tragedy in a world full of them, and should a man think to stand against all the world’s evils, even the petty ones, he could only be crushed, for those evils, taken together, were a great mountain, one that could not be stood against.”
― Jacob Peppers, The Wandering Sword

“A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man only one.”
― Jacob Peppers, A Sellsword's Will

“To most of those who followed him, my father was a mountain, indestructible. But I was there when the mountain trembled, Aaron, I saw it. He was a great man, my father, but he was only a man.”
― Jacob Peppers, A Sellsword's Resolve

“little bit of learning took a man away from the gods and that a lot of it brought him back.”
― Jacob Peppers, A Warrior's Oath

“But death is not evil, is not even an ending. It is only a transition”
― Jacob Peppers, The Truth of Shadows

“It’s something that happens, when you get older. You start to worry.”
― Jacob Peppers, Requiem for a Soldier

“if the world is a dirty place, if the world is a mess—and I don’t think any right thinking person could say otherwise—then it is a mess for one reason. There are too many people making messes and not nearly enough cleaning them up.”
― Jacob Peppers, A Warrior's Oath

“She had told him then that still waters run deepest of all. He hadn't known what that meant at the time, but slowly over the years, he had begun to. Some men who talked often, most men in his experience, did so because they felt an almost obsessive need for it. A need that did not arise out of inner peace, but instead inner turmoil. Men and women who did not feel comfortable with the silence and simply existing and instead felt the need to gain control of their world. Or at least pretend to by imposing themselves upon it either by action or by speech. The truth the Wanderer had come to learn from Ranger over those months and years training with him was that it was enough simply to be. And another truth too, which was that men could not often talk and listen at the same time. Instead, they chose one to forego the other. And when a man was being hunted, when the slightest sound might betray the predator's approach, or alternatively, when he hunted for food, knowing that to fail was to starve, then he learned over time to accept the quiet. To allow it to simply be. The Wanderer accepted that quiet now.”
― Jacob Peppers, Requiem for a Soldier

“People get hurt sometimes,” she went on. “That’s just part of living. The only way not to have a risk of losing anything is not to have anything to lose.”
― Jacob Peppers, An Exile's Lament

“The ale wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good either, but Dannen knew from experience that a couple of mugs of the stuff and taste wouldn’t factor into it anymore. It was one of those little bits of magic even a normal man, without any sorcery, might experience.”
― Jacob Peppers, The Antiheroes

“Sometimes, a man does not choose his path, but the world chooses it for him. In such times, with such men, the only thing to do is walk the path before you, wherever it may lead.”
― Jacob Peppers, A Sellsword's Valor

“As he stood there, bathing, feeling the cool water and the warm sun, listening to the sounds of the birds and the squirrels, he reflected, as he often had over the years, that many men spent their entire lives looking for peace but that such a quest was a fool’s errand. Peace wasn’t something a man could find for the looking. Instead, it found him. It found him in brief moments like this, so quick that a man, if he weren’t paying attention, might not notice at all, and so rare that he could never be sure that this time wasn’t the last time.”
― Jacob Peppers, The Wandering Sword

“Whatever the reason, less than half an hour passed before the wanderer committed one of the gravest mistakes, one of the gravest crimes, of his life. He fell asleep.”
― Jacob Peppers, The Wandering Sword

“yet,”
― Jacob Peppers, A Warrior's Burden

“worrying does little good in warding off death. Still, I find that it excels in warding off living.”
― Jacob Peppers, A Sellsword's Will

“if a man means to lead, he ought to first learn how to follow, and if he means to be served, he ought first learn how to serve.”
― Jacob Peppers, The Wandering Sword

“The wanderer thought that was a lot like living a destitute, empty existence so that the thief would have nothing to steal, when he came. The problem, of course, was that such a man did the thief’s—did Death’s—job for him.”
― Jacob Peppers, An Outlaw's Vengeance