Jack Whyte > Quotes

“She knew exactly how he was feeling, because experience had taught her that the kind of excitement she was feeling at that moment was never, ever one-sided. On the contrary, she knew that it was born of acute and mutual anticipation, and she knew, too, that it would not be denied.”
― Jack Whyte, Uther

“Their sudden intimacy was like the explosive combustion that engulfs and consumes a moth that has fluttered too close to a candle flame; a completely unexpected turn of events that took both of them unawares and swept them irresistibly up and out of themselves as it hurled them into each other’s arms.”
― Jack Whyte, Uther

“I suspect that much of life is like that. We seldom see what is closest to our eyes.”
― Jack Whyte, Uther

“I knew even then, the first time that I saw you, that I loved you.”
― Jack Whyte, Uther

“A man is a fool to live in hopes of a better tomorrow. I have a thousand, better ways today to spend what time remains ahead of me, and I have brighter, lighter and more pleasant places in which to spend it.”
― Jack Whyte, Uther

“[What is honor]—I suspect that if, after reading this book, you were to go and ask the question of your friends and acquaintances, you might experience some difficultly finding someone who could give you, off the cuff, an accurate and adequate definition of honor. Those who do respond will probably offer synonyms, digging into their memories for other words that are seldom used in today's world, like integrity, probity, morality, and self-sufficiency based upon an ethical and moral code. Some might even refine that further to include a conscience, but no one has ever really succeeded in defining honor absolutely, because it is a very personal phenomenon, resonating differently in everyone who is aware of it. We seldom speak of it today, in our post-modern, post-everything society. It is an anachronism, a quaint, mildly amusing concept from a bygone time, and those of us who do speak of it and think of it are regarded benevolently, and condescendingly, as eccentrics. But honor, in every age except, perhaps, our own, has been highly regarded and greatly respected, and it has always been one of those intangible attributes that everyone assumes they possess naturally and in abundance. The standards established for it have always been high, and often artificially so, and throughout history battle standards have been waved as symbols of the honor and prowess of their owners. But for men and women of goodwill, the standard of honor has always been individual, jealously guarded, intensely personal, and uncaring of what others may think, say, or do.”
― Jack Whyte, Standard of Honor

“Magic, after all, is no more than the product of knowledge others don’t share.”
― Jack Whyte, The Skystone

“Square wheels are hard to sell”
― Jack Whyte, The Skystone

“In the space of a few, bright years, something new stirred in this land; something unprecedented; something wonderful; and men, being men, perceived it with stunned awe and then, being men, destroyed it without thought, for being new and strange.”
― Jack Whyte, The Saxon Shore

“My admiration for Britannicus grew as I watched the uncomplaining manner in which he accepted the injustice and the inefficiency and inconvenience being heaped upon him by incompetent superiors.”
― Jack Whyte, The Skystone

“Alaric said at the time that the man, whom we both knew, had been "possessed by the beast." Hearing these words from Alaric, a man of God, I assumed he meant THE beast, the Devil, and I said so. Alaric, however, quickly brought me to order on my misunderstanding.

It is too easy, he told me, with that simplicity of speech I so admired in him, to blame all our human griefs and ills on Lucifer. In doing so, he said, we can evade responsibility for our own actions, whereas the fault, in truth, is attributable to a lesser, more human beast that alternates constantly between lying dormant or raging savagely within each of us, male and female. The degree to which each of us subjugates our personal beast dictates the goodness, or the greatness, we achieve in this life.”
― Jack Whyte, The Singing Sword

“Empires have risen in this world and fallen, and history takes note of few of them. Those that survive in the memories of men do so by virtue of the faults that flawed their greatness. But here in Britain, in my own lifetime, a spark ignited in the breast of one strong man and became a clean, pure flame to light the world, a beacon that might have outshone the great lighthouse of Pharos, had a sudden gust of wilful wind not extinguished it prematurely. In the space of a few, bright years, something new stirred in this land; something unprecedented; something wonderful; and men, being men, perceived it with stunned awe and then, being men, destroyed it without thought, for being new and strange. When it was over, when the light was snuffed out like a candle flame, a young man, full of hurt and bewilderment, asked me to explain how everything had happened. He expected me to know, for I was Merlyn, the Sorcerer, Fount of all Wisdom.”
― Jack Whyte

“The wind that seemed to blow endlessly from the north at this time of year had a malevolence, a concentrated hostility, that made it different from any other wind in the world. It came buffeting and blistering south out of the hills, its force twisted and compressed by their contours, and slapped hard against the fifteen-foot-high surface of the Wall, to be sucked down like cataract water into the ten-foot ditch below and then spewed back up and over and between the battlements with an erratic violence that could panic a man by snatching the air out of his mouth as he tried to breathe.”
― Jack Whyte, The Skystone

“There is a beast in every man who breathes, a beast that is born in him and lives within him all his life, in a constant struggle for dominance over what he would prefer to think of as his "better self." I say that with complete conviction because I have had to come to terms with my own personal beast, and it now lies dormant inside me; dormant, but far from dead. It stirs, occasionally, reminding me of its presence, of its poison”
― Jack Whyte, The Singing Sword

“And they say the greatest sin against faith is despair, because it denies the existence of hope.”
― Jack Whyte, Knights of the Black and White

“There has to be something produced before anyone can consume it, and I believe no man has a right to live if he does not produce something. Parasites are destructive. Yet our society, our Roman state, has never seen any need to encourage its people to produce sensibly or to govern their own production! That’s all I’m going to say. Otherwise I’ll get angry.”
― Jack Whyte, The Skystone

“They are ordinary but courageous people who decided they could not continue to live under the Empire's rules, even then."

I frowned. "For example?"

"Examples? Try crippling taxes, unjust and self-serving laws, constant inflation, corrupt officials, restrictive regulations governing the way they lived their lives and constant government interference."

I had nothing to say to this, so he continued. "They walked away — out of the Empire. Away from their homes, from their businesses, from their employment. Away from the taxes and the duties and the burdens. They walked away to the hills and the forests and they refused to go back. They built huts and they lived on whatever they could grow and hunt for themselves." His voice was almost a monotone. "It started as a trickle at the end of the third century and it grew into a flood. We're now at the end of the fourth century and it's still going on. For over a hundred years now these Bagaudae have paid no taxes, obeyed no Roman laws and spared the lives of no Roman soldiers who came after them. Most of them live communally on huge villa farms and settlements. Each man contributes to the life of the commune with his own skills and abilities. They have no use for money; they barter. And among their numbers are physicians, magistrates, architects, lawyers, administrators and a large number of professional soldiers."

"That's incredible, " I said. "And the Empire does nothing?" He spread his hands wide in a gesture that was purely Gallic. "What can the Empire do? The bureaucrats are afraid that the story will spread. The official policy is to do nothing that will attract attention to the problem. To ignore it, in the hope that it will go away. Rome leaves the Bagaudae in peace, because the alternative might stir up a furore that could breed an Empire full of Bagaudae."
- The Skystone”
― Jack Whyte, The Skystone

“E così avvenne che quando il ragazzo che sarebbe stato il mio pupillo subì la mia influenza, io gli insegnai secondo le antiche tradizioni dell'antica Roma, e della Roma repubblicana, e secondo le idee del vecchio vescovo Alarico e di Palagio, e secondo le idee che regnavano a Camelot ai tempi di mio padre e di suo padre, e che non erano le idee della nuova Roma. Il ragazzo a cui feci da maestro apprese la pulizia, la semplice religiosità, la disciplina e la vita di un guerriero. Apprese a godere la bontà della vita, a godere e ad apprezzare la bontà e la forza delle donne, e ad accettare per vere l'intrinseca nobiltà e la bontà dell'uomo.”
― Jack Whyte

“In direct consequence, the boundaries between right and wrong are being blurred. The emphasis -- even among the ordinary, common people -- is changing from 'Don't do that, or you'll be punished,' to 'Don't get caught doing that...' That represents a major change in people's attitudes, Publius, and hand in hand with it walks corruption.”
― Jack Whyte, The Singing Sword