Karen

“I liked those tales. They were better than my stepmother’s stories of Cuthbert’s miracles. Christians, it seemed to me, were forever weeping and I did not think Woden’s worshippers cried much.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Last Kingdom

“My friend, you had horses, and deed of arms, and the free fields; but she, being born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours. Yet she was doomed to wait upon an old man, whom she loved as a father, and watch him falling into a mean dishonoured dotage; and her part seemed to her more ignoble than that of the staff he leaned on.
-Gandalf to Eomer, of Eowyn”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“Oh, it’s a terrible, cruel thing—first you’re young, and that takes up such a long time you think it’s forever, then suddenly you’re not young, and you never get used to it—and, oh dear, there’s just the one way out.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“Were the Romans Christians?” I asked him, remembering my curiosity at the Roman farm. “Not always,” Ravn said. “They had their own gods once, but they gave them up to become Christians and after that they knew nothing but defeat.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Last Kingdom