The Horus Heresy Quotes

“There must come a moment when the soul knows: this far, and no further. But we are cursed never to hear that warning until it is too late.’
– attributed to the remembrancer Ignace Karkasy [M31]”
― James Swallow, Garro: Knight Of Grey

“Mankind has proven to be pathologically incapable of learning from its own mistakes. It blithely remembers the witness of history, but it does not apply the knowledge it gains.”
― Dan Abnett, Saturnine

“But he knows, and I know, and you know, that any defence is only as strong as its weakest part: faith, belief, trust.”
― Dan Abnett, The Lightning Tower

“I love mirrors,’ he had once heard Fulgrim say. ‘They let one pass through the surface of things.”
― Graham McNeill, The Reflection Crack'd

“At the root of your lies, is there any truth, father?’
The darkness becomes a forest, dark trunks reaching to an untouchable sky, roots crawling out and down into the abyss beneath. The man on the chair is sitting on the snow-covered ground, a fire burning before Him. A shadow moves out of the dark between the trees. It is huge, sable-furred and silver-eyed. It drags its shadow with it as it comes forwards. It pauses on the edge of the light.
‘You claim to be a man,’says the wolf, ‘but that is a lie revealed to any that can see you here. You deny you wish godhood, but you raise up an empire to praise you. You call yourself the Master of Mankind, and perhaps that is the only truth you ever spoke – that you wish to make your children slaves.”
― John French, The Solar War

“But what was a scar, really? Neither evidence of defeat, nor a medal of triumph. A scar was nothing more than a mark to show that a warrior faced his enemies at all times, never once showing his back.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Butcher's Nails

“All things in this grand universe are linked to one another by invisible threads, even those things that appear as opposites.”
― Graham McNeill, The Reflection Crack'd

“My Legion–’ Magnus’s face creased with rising anger ‘–was backed into a corner. My Thousand Sons died because of your treachery, because of the venom you whispered in Horus’s ears to start this insanity. He calls it his rebellion, but we both know the first heart to turn traitor was the one beating in your chest.’
Lorgar laughed again, the sound one of unfeigned delight. ‘See? The blame always lies with one of us unworthy souls. Never with you for making the wrong compacts with the gods that you deny are even real!’
The parchments on Lorgar’s armour flapped in the sudden wind of Magnus’s ire. The Word Bearer stood unfazed, his serene smile boiling his brother’s blood. The sorcerer’s skin quivered, beetles writhing beneath it as witch-lightning danced across his coppery flesh. Magnus moved, his body forming from the air itself, shaped out of the poison behind reality’s veil. Anger drove him into true incarnation.
‘That is enough, Lorgar.’
Lorgar nodded. ‘It is. I’ve no desire to trade insults. We’ve all made mistakes, it’s how we deal with the aftermath that matters.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Betrayer

“The realities of pitched warfare rarely made it into the sagas. In all the stories he’d heard, especially those woeful diatribes from the remembrancers, battle was reduced to a handful of heroes going blade-to-blade in the sunlight, while their nameless lessers looked on in stupefied awe.
It took a great deal to make Khârn cringe, but war poetry never failed.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Betrayer

“Argel Tal often said that Fate had a vicious sense of humour. Khârn never doubted it for a second.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Betrayer

“‘Victory comes,’ Angron smiled, showing a crescent of bloody teeth, ‘to the last man standing.’”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Betrayer

“‘Who are you to say that I may not sit at this hearth? Am I not as you? Did we not once break bread, laugh, bleed and weep together? Am I not the one who set off into the world at your side till paths and time set our steps towards different suns? Am I not returned to this place called home, weary with time and the weight of the sword? Is the only rest you would give me that of the bed of knives? Shall we not sit and talk and remember that once we were brothers?’
– from the Voice of the Stones, pre-unification Terra, exact era and author unknown”
― John French, Cthonia's Reckoning

“Presence of mind in all things, I counsel. Be aware of thyself before all else.”
― Gav Thorpe, Luther: First of the Fallen

“As I said, be careful from whom one gains knowledge and be aware of the price of its acquisition.”
― gav Thorpe, Luther: First of the Fallen

“When one has no power, one will seek hope from any source.”
― Gav Thorpe, The First Wall

“Loken!’ she cried, eyes wide with terror. ‘Loken!’
His blow faltered.
‘Mersadie?’
She took a step towards him. Hands rising, fingers shaking.
‘Oh, you poor fool…’ she said. ‘No.”
― John French, The Solar War

“What better mirror is there than the face of an old friend? Only those we love have the power to show us our true selves.”
― Graham McNeill, The Reflection Crack'd

“This is our debate – He believes that the task of a ruler is to make himself obsolete, so that his people will replace him when they are mature enough. I disagree. I do not think we will ever be mature enough for that. I believe that no one but He will ever be strong enough to hold mankind together, even for a moment. He is quite exceptional, you know, perhaps in ways He doesn’t even understand Himself.”
― Chris Wraight, The Sigillite

“We are future memories. When our flesh is dust and our dreams faded we will be ghosts living in a land of legends, made real only by the memories of others. What we take with us into that realm of the dead, what we are remembered for, that will be the truth of our lives.’
– Solomon Voss, from The Edge of Illumination”
― John French, The Crimson Fist

“The horde had the numbers to bring about the war’s end, while the defenders only possessed the numbers to delay it – but the losses were going to be grotesque. Ulienne didn’t want to die for the Emperor’s stubbornness. She wanted to live, to see the Warmaster’s ambitions come to fruition. She wanted the Imperium that Horus had promised. An empire for eternity. A kingdom of humanity that would never fall.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden

“There it was again, the treasonous little notion Ulienne couldn’t quite shake. Horus was a hero, the Warmaster of the Imperium, the pacifier of the galaxy. Of course she’d followed him. The Legio Audax had willingly worn his colours and cast their fate with his. But what would be left after this war? What would be left of Terra and the armies fighting to take it?
Surely even now, quiescent alien kingdoms at the Imperium’s edges were reawakening, daring to cast jealous eyes at the worlds they’d lost in the Great Crusade. Would there be enough of the Warmaster’s hosts left to hold the Imperium in its entirety? And what would those hosts look like, with all order and discipline and humanity raked out of them? The Legiones Astartes were already blood-maddened and fighting by the side of those… those things. The regiments of Imperial Army wearing the Warmaster’s Eye were no better. Ulienne Grune didn’t want peace. Peace was boring. Peace was for the weak. She wanted wars she could win.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Echoes of Eternity

“After thirty thousand years, warfare had come full circle.
The sheer scale of humanity’s conflicts disregarded the corrupt reliance on automation as seen in the Dark Age of Technology. Mankind was back down to swords beating against shields and men entrenched with their rifles, where the gods of myth were Titan war machines and Baneblade tanks.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden

“The concept of luck flew in the face of the Omnissiah’s divine plan and was therefore a falsehood.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Echoes of Eternity

“We need to appreciate what we have and strive for what we can achieve, rather than reach for what’s denied to us.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Betrayer

“With creation and function came peace. With mental fortitude came strength and the banishment of weakness.”
― Nick Kyme, Feat of Iron

“To know our enemy we must understand their trajectory. If I can know their history I can predict their future.”
― Gav Thorpe, Luther: First of the Fallen

“I did something that should not have been done and, by direct consequence of that decision, I sit here now and my world is destroyed, my oaths broken with my legacy one of misery and treachery.”
― Gav Thorpe, Luther: First of the Fallen

“So it is with nephilla and their masters, especially the Architect of Fate. The balance of power is never certain and lies are so easily cloaked in the lightest truth. From that first encounter to the last on the eve of Caliban’s death, I thought I was in control and forged a path for Caliban and the Order. In truth, I was waylaid long ago by a false map and led like a fool into the most treacherous depths, from which I never freed myself.
It is always the way when dealing with the powers of the warp. Your first steps always seem to be in the right direction, but you will never know at what point you started following their road, because after a time you forget there was a destination at all, and all that remains is the journey.”
― Gav Thorpe, Luther: First of the Fallen

“The test is in leaving the castle,’ said the Supreme Grand Master. ‘To give up all that came before and begin again with nothing.”
― Gav Thorpe, Luther: First of the Fallen

“Savage weapons, one and all, too dangerous to be wielded without cost. That is all history will see of us. Even you, Lion. Even you.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Savage Weapons