Eddings Belgariad Quotes & Sayings

If you don't love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us — Stendhal

That such lowly beginnings would soon become one of the world's strongest dictatorships is beyond fantastic. Lenin was essentially a pamphleteer. In 1918 he was identified as "Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and journalist," and earned more money from publication honoraria (15,000 rubles) than from his salary (10,000 rubles).17 Trotsky was a writer as well, and a grandiloquent orator, but similarly without experience or training in statecraft. Sverdlov was something of an amateur forger, thanks to his father's engraving craft, and a crack political organizer but hardly an experienced policy maker. Stalin was also an organizer, a rabble-rouser, and, briefly, a bandit, but primarily a periodicals editor - commissar of nationalities was effectively his first regular employment since his brief stint as a teenage Tiflis weatherman. Now, — Stephen Kotkin

Operating by trial and error mostly, we've evolved a tacitly agreed upon list of the elements that make for a good fantasy. The first decision the aspiring fantasist must make is theological. King Arthur and Charlemagne were Christians. Siegfried and Sigurd the Volsung were pagans. My personal view is that pagans write better stories. When a writer is having fun, it shows, and pagans have more fun than Christians. Let's scrape Horace's Dulche et utile off the plate before we even start the banquet. We're writing for fun, not to provide moral instruction. I had much more fun with the Belgariad/Malloreon than you did, because I know where all the jokes are.
All right, then, for item number one, I chose paganism. (Note that Papa Tolkien, a devout Anglo-Catholic, took the same route.) — David Eddings

Having escaped the Dark Ages in which animals were mere stimulus-response machines, we are free to contemplate their mental lives. It is a great leap forward, the one that Griffin fought for. But now that animal cognition is an increasingly popular topic, we are still facing the mindset that animal cognition can be only a poor substitute of what we humans have. It can't be truly deep and amazing. Toward the end of a long career, many a scholar cannot resist shining a light on human talents by listing all the things we are capable of and animals not. From the human perspective, these conjectures may make a satisfactory read, but for anyone interested, as I am, in the full spectrum of cognitions on our planet, they come across as a colossal waste of time. What a bizarre animal we are that the only question we can ask in relation to our place in nature is "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the smartest of them all? — Frans De Waal

Yes, it is the precepts of men versus the revealed word of God. The more we follow the word of God the less we are deceived, while those who follow the wisdom of men are deceived the most. — Ezra Taft Benson

He watches her the way Harshaw watches fire. Like he'll never have enough of her. Like he's trying to capture what he can before she's gone. — Leigh Bardugo

My Lord, I find thy face apelike and thy form misshapen. Thy beard, moreover, is an offense against decency, resembling more closely the scabrous fir which doth decorate the hinder portion of a mongrel dog than a proper adornement for a human face. Is it possible that thy mother, seized by some wild lechery, did dally at some time past with a randy goat? -Mandorallen — David Eddings

It's such a little thing to weep -
So short a thing to sigh -
And yet - by Trades - the size of these
We men and women die! — Emily Dickinson

Whether or not patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, national security can be the last refuge of the tyrant. — Robert Walker, Baron Walker Of Gestingthorpe

Your
ah
intervention, shall we say, has simplified things in the palace enormously. We no longer have to worry about Salmissra's whims and peculiar appetites. We rule by committee, and we hardly ever find it necessary to poison each other anymore. No one's tried to poison me for months. — David Eddings

Ordinary men live in fear all the time. Didn't you know that? We're afraid of the weather, we're afraid of powerful men, we're afraid of the night and the monsters that lurk in the dark, we're afraid of growing old and of dying. Sometimes we're even afraid of living. Ordinary men are afraid almost every minute of their lives. — David Eddings

Anyway, Arianna and I left the castle very late one evening. I knew the knight on guard at the drawbridge so I hit hit him over the head because I didn't want to hurt him.
Garion blinked.
"I knew he'd be honor-bound to try to stop us," Lelldorin explained. "I didn't want to have to kill him, so I hit him over the head."
"I suppose that makes sense," Garion said dubiously.
"Arianna's almost positive he won't die."
"DIE?"
"I hit him just a little too hard, I think. — David Eddings

Would you look at this?" Silk waved a piece of parchment at the old man.
"What's the problem?" Belgarath took the parchment and read it.
"That whole business was settled years ago," Silk declared in an irritated voice. "Why are these things still being circulated?"
"The description IS colorful," Belgarath noted.
"Did you see that?" Silk sounded mortally offended. He turned to Garion. "Do I look like a weasel to you?"
"
an ill-favored, weasel-faced man," Belgarath read, "shifty-eyed and with a long, pointed nose. A notorious cheat at dice."
"Do you mind? — David Eddings

They have eating dogs for the anorexic now. — Prince Philip

The priest DID have it coming, though," Lelldorin declared hotly.
"What priest?"
"The priest of Chaldan at that little chapel who wouldn't marry us because Arianna couldn't give him a document proving she had her family's consent. He was very insulting."
"Did you break anything?"
"A few of his teeth is about all
and I stopped hitting him as soon as he agreed to perform the ceremony. — David Eddings

Well
to put it briefly
Arianna and I had become
well
friends."
"I see."
"Nothing improper, you understand," Lelldorin said quickly. "But our friendship was such that
well
we didn't want to be separated." The young Asturian's face appealed to his friend for understanding. "Actually," he went on, "it was a little more than 'didn't want to.' Arianna told me she'd die if I left her behind."
"Possibly she was exaggerating," Garion suggested.
"How could I risk it, though?" Lelldorin protested. "Women are much more delicate than we are
besides, Arianna's a physician. She'd know if she'd die, wouldn't she? — David Eddings

When even the dictators of today appeal to reason, they mean that they possess the most tanks. They were rational enough to build them; others should be rational enough to yield to them. — Max Horkheimer

People are entitled to believe the government is constantly lying to them, but it isn't. — Elliott Abrams

Does bouncing count? -- Silk, The Belgariad — David Eddings