Robert Jordan Quotes

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“Wounds to the pride are remembered long after wounds to the flesh.”

“Cheer the bull, or cheer the bear; cheer both, and you will be trampled and eaten.”

“Caution once forgotten could be forgotten once too often.”

“I trust you like a brother. Until the day you betray me. You have a parole for what you’ve done, in return for your teaching, and a better bargain than you deserve, but the day you turn against me, I will tear it up and bury it with you.”

“The Wheel of Time and the wheel of a man's life turn alike without pity or mercy.”

“When a young woman's cheeks redden for no apparent reason, there is usually a man involved.”

“I may be a fool, but I intend to be a live fool.”

“The best lie is often one too ridiculous to be taken for a lie.”

“It was easier to trip a fool than to knock him down.”

“Soon comes the day all shall be free. Even you, and even me. Soon comes the day all shall die. Surely you, but never I.”

“Only the dead could afford oblivion.”

“Nothing ever goes as you expect. Expect nothing, and you will not be surprised. Expect nothing. Hope for nothing. Nothing.”

“What I love I destroy. What I destroy, I love.”

“No man should have another man's voice in his head.”

“The only way to live is to die. I must die. I deserve only death.”

“There was a price to be paid for any decision he made. There was a price for who he was. Other people paid it.”

“Let most men have a finger, and they will have the whole hand before you know. Let a clan chief have a finger, and he will have the entire arm.”

“Dance well with a woman, and she’s halfway yours.”

“The arrogance of men never ceases to amaze me. You all think everything has to do with you, and every woman has to desire you.”

“Pride fills me. I am sick with the pride that destroyed me.”

“I thought I could build, I was wrong. We are not builders, not you, or I, or the other one. We are destroyers. Destroyers.”

“The boy was dead eager, which could soon lead to plain dead.”

“How people see you first is what they hold hardest in their minds. It is the way of the world. You can step down from a throne], and even if you behave like a farmer in a pigsty, some part in each of them will remember that you did descend from a throne. But if they see only a young man first, a country man, they will resent him stepping up to his throne later, whatever his right, whatever his power.”

“If you try putting a woman on a horse when she does not want to go, she may put a knife in your ribs.”

“If you fell head first into a pigsty, you'd try to convince everybody you did it on purpose.”

“A fool puts a burr under the saddle before she rides.”

“No wine for me. Strange enough things happen when my head is clear. I want to know the difference.”

“The road ahead of you is long, dark, and, I very much fear, bloodstained. I also very much fear that you will take us all down that road. But you must live to reach the end of it.”

“The yellowfly is almost too small to see, but if you leave its egg in your skin, you will lose an arm or leg before it hatches - if it does not kill you.”

“The fox often offers the duck its pond.”

“There are things worth fighting for.”

“Teach him how you will, a pig will never play the flute.”

“Humankind is made for uncertainty, struggle, choice and change.”

“It is better to guide people than try to hammer them into a line.”

“We all have our limits. And we set them further out than we have any right.”

“The only man completely at peace is a man without a navel.”

“First things first; take care of what can be done now before worrying too long over what might never be.”

“In the Borderlands, sheepherder, if a man has the raising of a child, that child is his, and none can say different.”

“Men fight when they should run, and fools fight when they should run. But I had no need to say it twice.”

“You can never know everything, and part of what you know is always wrong. Perhaps even the most important part. A portion of wisdom lies in knowing that. A portion of courage lies in going on anyway.”

“Men always believe they are in control of everything around them. When they find out they are not, they think they have failed, instead of learning a simple truth women already know.”

“Fall in love with a man, and you end up doing laundry, even if it does belong to another man.”

“Do you know how to unite the people behind you, Child Carridin? The quickest way? Loose a lion - a rabid lion - in the streets. And when panic grips the people, once it has turned their bowels to water, calmly tell them you will deal with it. Then you kill it, and order them to hang the carcass up where everyone can see. Before they have time to think, you give another order, and it will be obeyed. And if you continue to give orders, they will continue to obey, for you will be the one who saved them, and who better to lead?”

“Never prod at a woman unless you must. She will kill you faster than a man and for less reason, even if she weeps over it after.”

“We can't go back, Mat. The Wheel has turned, for better or worse. And it will keep turning, as lights die and forests dim, storms call and skies break. Turn it will. The Wheel is not hope, and the Wheel does not care, the Wheel simply is. But so long as it turns, folk may hope, folk may care. For with light that fades, another will eventually grow, and each storm that rages must eventually die. As long as the Wheel turns. As long is it turns….”

“The louder a man tells you he’s honest, the harder you must hold onto your purse.”

“If I could find a way to escape my destiny, do I deserve to?”

“A man should never give promises in bed.”

“[Aviendha] didn't trust change. It couldn't be spotted or stabbed; it was more silent than any scout, more deadly than any assassin. No, she'd never trust it, but she would accept it.”