You know nothing of war. War is dark. Black as pitch. It is not a God. It does not laugh or weep. It rewards neither skill nor daring. It is not a trial of souls, not the measure of wills. Even less is it a tool, a means to some womanish end. It is merely the place where the iron bones of the earth meet the hollow bones of men and break them.

R. Scott Bakker

Categorized in : Mean War Dark

The thoughts of all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be anything other than a slave to the darkness that comes before?

R. Scott Bakker

soul darkness men

There was such a difference, he thought, between the beauty that illuminated, and the beauty that was illuminated.

R. Scott Bakker

differences

A beggar's mistake harms no one but the beggar. A king's mistake, however, harms everyone but the king. Too often, the measure of power lies not in the number who obey your will, but in the number who suffer your stupidity.

R. Scott Bakker

kings mistake lying

To be ignorant and to be deceived are two different things. To be ignorant is to be a slave of the world. To be deceived is to be the slave of another man. The question will always be: Why, when all men are ignorant, and therefore already slaves, does this latter slavery sting us so?

R. Scott Bakker

ignorant men two

This is the problem of all great revelations: their significance so often exceeds the frame of our comprehension. We understand only after, always after. Not simply when it is too late, but precisely because it is too late.

R. Scott Bakker

revelations problem too-late

Everyone thinks they've won the Magical Belief Lottery. Everyone thinks they more or less have a handle on things, that they, as opposed to the billions who disagree with them, have somehow lucked into the one true belief system.

R. Scott Bakker

billions belief thinking

To indulge it is to breed it. To punish it is to feed it. Madness knows no bridle but the knife.

R. Scott Bakker

indulge knives madness

Exhaustion has a way of parting the veils between men, not so much because the effort of censoring their words exceeds them, but because weariness is the foe of volatility. Oft times insults that would pierce the wakeful simply thud against the sleepless and fatigued.

R. Scott Bakker

effort veils men

Any fool can see the limits of seeing, but not even the wisest know the limits of knowing. Thus is ignorance rendered invisible, and are all Men made fools.

R. Scott Bakker

ignorance knowing men

Here we find further argument for Gotagga’s supposition that the world is round. How else could all men stand higher than their brothers?

R. Scott Bakker

brother men world

Faith is the truth of passion. Since no passion is more true than another, faith is the truth of nothing.

R. Scott Bakker

passion

Though all men be equally frail before the world, the differences between them are terrifying.

R. Scott Bakker

differences men world

I tell you, guilt dwells nowhere but in the eyes of the accuser. This men know even as they deny it, which is why they so often make murder their absolution. The truth of crime lies not with the victim but with the witness.

R. Scott Bakker

eye men lying

Love is lust made meaningful. Hope is hunger made human.

R. Scott Bakker

lust love-is meaningful

I wanted a literate, socially intricate, and cosmopolitan world - something I could have fun destroying.

R. Scott Bakker

destroying fun world

The bondage we are born into is the bondage we cannot see. Verily, freedom is little more than the ignorance of tyranny. Live long enough, and you will see: Men resent not the whip so much as the hand that wields it.

R. Scott Bakker

ignorance men hands

Complexity begets ambiguity, which yields in all ways to prejudice and avarice. Complication does not so much defeat Men as arm them with fancy.

R. Scott Bakker

yield doe men

Gods are but greater demons, the Cishaurim said, hungers across the surface of eternity, wanting only to taste the clarity of our souls. Can you not see this?

R. Scott Bakker

clarity taste soul

It is only after that we understand what has come before, then we understand nothing. Thus we shall define the soul as follows: that which precedes everything.

R. Scott Bakker

soul

He had despised the sorcerer, thinking him one of those mewling souls who forever groaned beneath burdens of their own manufacture.

R. Scott Bakker

soul forever thinking