Brian Ruckley > Quotes

“Loss alone is but the wounding of a heart; it is memory that makes it our ruin.”
― Brian Ruckley, Fall of Thanes

“Think how much happier the world might be if people sought approval for what they do from their children instead of their ancestors.”
― Brian Ruckley, Winterbirth

“I think now, looking back, that we all die, little by little, as each of those we love departs before us.”
― Brian Ruckley, Fall of Thanes

“If a man feared defeat, he would never give battle... Every victory is inevitably succeeded by defeat. It is the nature of our lives. A man might fight a thousand battles and emerge triumphant from every one; still, he will suffer defeat in the end, for we die and we are forgotten. If we cannot face defeat, we must live always, throughout our lives, in fear. For it awaits us all.”
― Brian Ruckley, Fall of Thanes

“When a man may whisper in a close ear, and that whisper be repeated far away and many moons later, then he has power. When a many may speak against another, and that other be brought to ruin and rue by nothing more than those words, then he has power. And if a man can act without the appearance of action, and bring about great change without the appearance of desiring it, then he has power.”
― Brian Ruckley, Bloodheir

“Power loves not the light of day, nor the attention of curious eyes. In darkness it thrives most...A lord may send his army hither and thither, but the true testing of his power is in those places where his army is not...Has he sent its long fingers far enough through the backstreets and alleys, into the drinking dens and the lending-houses, so that he may gather them unto himself and hold them firm without a single swordsman?”
― Brian Ruckley, Bloodheir

“Power loves not the light of day, nor the attention of curious eyes. In darkness it thrives most. Examined too closely, it wither.”
― Brian Ruckley, Bloodheir

“But past service counted for little these days. The world, and those who governed it, moved too quickly to be carrying such burdens as memory and gratitude.”
― Brian Ruckley, The Edinburgh Dead

“For you, and and all the other readers who have followed the story to its conclusion”
― Brian Ruckley, Fall of Thanes

“Not a cave, not quite; a tomb. Quire felt himself to be disturbing a place that had been asleep for a long time.”
― Brian Ruckley, The Edinburgh Dead

“There's more things in the world that are old and deep than these men of philosophy and science we're infested with these days can admit of. Forgotten, maybe, by most; not the same as being gone.”
― Brian Ruckley, The Edinburgh Dead

“I rather fancy, if you will forgive me an aphorism, that we live in not the Age of Reason, as so many proclaim, but in that of Ignorance; for there is nothing reason so readily proclaims to the attentive mind as the extent of our ignorance. It transforms what were once mysteries, for ever inaccessible to human comprehension, into merely phenomena we have not yet explained, and thereby at once increases what we know and what we do not.”
― Brian Ruckley, The Edinburgh Dead

“Can we call you a believer yet, then?"
"Call me what you like," Quire sniffed. "I stopped knowing what to believe in a while back. I'm playing the game by the rules my enemies have set for the next wee while, that's all.”
― Brian Ruckley, The Edinburgh Dead

“unwise to dance with wishes unless you’ve the mettle for it. Wishing for what is not is a fast way to poison your heart.” The”
― Brian Ruckley, Winterbirth

“I've not treated you well," Quire murmured, laying a soft kiss on Cath's brow one night in the bed. "You'd no need to take me in here. I've not earned it."
"No, but I'm a saint," Cath whispered.
She stroked his neck.
"You're a rare breed, then," Quire smiled.
"We all are, aren't we? There's not a one of us so alike to another to be called the same. Not when you look proper close."
"Maybe that's true.”
― Brian Ruckley, The Edinburgh Dead