“If a man does not work passionately - even furiously - at being the best in the world at what he does, he fails his talent, his destiny, and his God.”

“I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prov...”

“Not everything you're good at is what you're called to do.”

“Remember what punishments befell us in this world when we ourselves did not cherish learning nor transmit it to other men.”

“Why Anglo-Saxon history? At the time it had struck the Gray Man as a foolish and unanswerable question. The things that drew him to that time period were surely unconscious and many-headed, diffuse...”

“There is no greater will on earth than the will to survive. These fine people, answering my father's call to arms, had the will in spades and droves. - Lord Tristan Dracanburh, Ethandun”

“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 ...”

“the greatest trick of kings is to fool the poor into thinking we have common cause with the rich simply because we live on the same bog. Then the poor get their heads split open in the battles they...”

“And so seplchred in such pomp dost lie,That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.”