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The Burning Stone

Book by Kate Elliott · 4 quotes · Dead Man, Dead People, Defend

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The Burning Stone Quotes

“Because you won't truly understand what it is we work toward until you have discovered it for yourself." Liath began to protest, but Meriam raised a hand for silence. "It is all very well to protest that because you have seen a horse ridden, you know how to ride. But you don't know how to ride until you have yourself ridden. Isn't that true?" "I don't see-" "You don't see because you persist in thinking that the art of the mathematici is like a story, something you can understand equally well whether it is read to you or you read it yourself. But the art of the mathematici isn't a story, it is a skill, like riding a horse, or fighting, or administering an estate, something that takes time and effort to master. Would you set an apprentice weaver to weave the king's royal robes? Ask a novice to illuminate the Holy Verses? Trust your life to a pilot who had never before sailed through these shoals? You, of all people, must understand fully." "Why?" Then Liath laughed, having picked up the habit from Sanglant. "Never mind, Sister. I know what you will say. You will say that when I understand fully, then I will also understand why I must understand fully." "There lies the beginning of understanding." Was Meriam amused? It was hard to tell. She was too ancient to be easily read. Like all the magi, she held layers within layers in herself, none of which were readily peeled off. "Is that why you're here, to understand?" "Nay", she replied to quietly that a hundred misgivings congealed into a dreadful foreboding in Liath's heart, and the night no longer seemed to tame. "I am here to save my child and my child's children from what will come.”

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“Thank God I don't have to pass judgement! Lord Geoffrey's accusations are troubling, and hard to disprove. But Count Alain is no fool. King Henry respected Lavastine, and as Alain said, it is harder to pass judgement on the actions of a dead man than on the worthiness of a living one." "Do you think so? The dead man can't defend himself." "But a good reputation is its own defense. It's harder to pass judgement exactly because he can't defend himself, because the whole of his life is laid out before you. Who are we, then, to decide we would have acted differently, and that our actions would have turned out for the better?”

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