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Knights Quotes

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Knights Quotes

“One lie might eye the highest throne / inside the castle of your mind, / and any whim may play the lord / when left unchecked, out of control, / once knights of reason flee their posts, / let sentiments invade these walls, / then leave the keep without defense. / How easily a kingdom falls! (from Interior Kingdom)”

“The Warrior Woman Code: A confident woman doesn't beg a man to stay, cry if they don't or need to tear down other women to be loved. She knows her value. When the person she is meant to be with finds her, that person will know it also. He won't be confused by it. He will fight for her because without her he feels incomplete. She will always be foremost in his mind above anyone else. She doesn't have to scheme to keep or entice him. She is okay walking away from him because she doesn't want to be seen as a choice or a woman that has some potential. She demands to be seen as "the one." To settle for anything less than that is an admission of insecurity and lack of self love.”

“Little girls grow up thinking that knights in shining armor actually exist.  But they don't.  And if those valiant heroes ever did bless this world with their chivalrous deeds, I imagine, just like Christ's apostles, they were destroyed by envy on the battlefront.”

“What do you know of the Knights?” he asked. Fin shrugged. “I thought knights were only in children’s stories until a few days ago.” Jeannot smiled. “A man could do worse than to live in the stories of a child. There is, perhaps, no better remembrance.” “Until the child grows up and finds out the stories aren’t true. You might be knights, but I don’t see any shining armor,” Fin said. Jeannot stopped near the gate of the auberge and faced her. “Each time a story is told, the details and accuracies and facts are winnowed away until all that remains is the heart of the tale. If there is truth at the heart of it, a tale may live forever. As a knight, there is no dragon to slay, no maiden to rescue, and no miraculous grail to uncover. A knight seeks the truth beneath these things, seeks the heart. We call this the corso. The path set before us. The race we must run.”

“I really feel sorry for the many men who are surrounded by people who flatter them all the time. In Chinese we have a golden proverb: "The true friend is the one who shows you how to bow down. Because you cannot enter the cave of treasures without bowing at the opening. And the true enemy is the one who flatters you. Because you cannot enter the cave of treasures standing tall with pride." At the end of the day, it is those that flatter you who keep you away from the true treasures in your life. In the culture we all live in today, we are taught to surround ourselves by people "who believe in us". That is true to some extent. But in reality, there are many times when the people around us ought to slap us in the face because we are being idiots. This seems to be particularly prevalent amongst men. In their quest to build a kingdom, they surround themselves with peasants. But this is not how to build a kingdom. In order to build a kingdom, surround yourself with knights. True friends who will protect you, even if it means protecting you from your own wayward self.”

“War seems like a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know. Then they get a taste of battle. For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they’ve been gutted by an axe. They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now, They take the wound, and when that’s still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water. If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron half helm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the small folk whose land they’re fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it’s just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don’t know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they’re fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad in all steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world. And the man breaks.”

“...[T]wo of you can be no match for the three giants, I will find you, if I can, a third brother, who will take on himself the third share of the fight, and the preparation...I will show him to you in a glass, and, when he comes, you will know him at once. If he will share your endeavors, you must teach him all you know, and he will repay you well, in present song, and in future deeds.' She opened the door of a curious old cabinet that stood in the room. On the inside of this door was an oval convex mirror...we at length saw reflected the place where we stood, and the old dame seated in her chair...at the feet of the dame lay a young man...weeping. 'Surely this youth will not serve our ends,' said I, 'for he weeps.' The old woman smiled. 'Past tears are present strength,'said she.”

“But you are like any other knight," she said bitterly. "You want to rescue the beautiful maiden in the tower." "Well, if she's there, I suppose it's only polite to rescue her. Though I'm embarassed to say that some of my fellow knghts woud probably only be interested if the maiden had a treasure to go along with her." "There's no treasure." "I didn't think there was. I mostly came for answers. Or maybe just the story.”

“Laethrig is my father's first son, and Sulian is already knotted in a girl's long hair, while I- I am free, and have an itch to the soles of my feet that I shall not find easement for, here in my father's hall." I looked at him in the clear upland light, the set of his head that matched that of the hawk on his fist, the hot red-brown eyes under the black brows; and I thought that he might be well right in that, and thought also that it would be good to have this frowning youngster among my captains. "I can maybe find the means for easing the soles to your feet," I said. "And if there is a like itching in the palm of your sword hand, I can find you a fine way to appease that also.”

“If you must fight this thing, there's no reason to go alone. You could take a battalion of knights or, failing that, me.' 'You think you're the equal of a battalion of knights?' she asks with a smile. He might be, he supposes, although there's no telling how the mortal world will affect his magic. He did once raise an isle from the bottom of the sea. He wonders if he ought to remind her of that, wonders if she had been impressed. 'I believe that I could easily best all of them combined, in a suitable contest. Perhaps one involving drink.' She kicks her ragwort steed forward with a laugh.”

“At any rate, the principles of a noble manner of life and the ethics of the nobility now take on the clear and uncompromising form known to us from the chivalric epic and lyric. We often find the new members of a privileged group to be more rigorous in their attitude to questions of class etiquette than the born representatives of the group; they are more clearly conscious of the ideas which hold the particular group together and distinguish it from other groups than are men who grew up in those ideas. This is a well-known and often-repeated feature of social history; the novus homo is always inclined to over-compensate for his sense of inferiority and to emphasize the moral qualifications required for the privileges which he enjoys. In the present case, too, we find that the knights who have risen from the ranks of the retainers are stricter and more intolerant in matters of honour than the old aristocrats by birth. What seems to the latter a matter of course, something that could hardly be otherwise than what it is, appears to the newly ennobled an achievement and a problem. The feeling of belonging to the governing class, one of which the old nobility had scarcely been conscious, is for them a great new experience. Where the old-style aristocrat acts instinctively and makes no pretensions about it, the knight finds himself faced with a special task of difficulty, an opportunity for heroic action, a need to surpass himself—in fact to do something extraordinary and unnatural. In matters in which a born grand seigneur takes no trouble to distinguish himself from the rest of mankind, the new knight requires of his peers that they should at all costs show themselves different from ordinary mortals.”

“Knighthood became an anachronism not because its weapons, but because its ‘idealism’ and irrationalism had become out of date. The knight did not understand the motive forces behind the new economy, the new society and the new state; he still persisted in regarding the middle class with its money and ‘narrow-minded’ commercial outlook as an anomaly. The men of the middle class knew much better where they stood with the knights. It amused them to join in the masquerade of the knightly tournaments and the ‘courts of love’, but they treated all such activities as mere sport; in their business activities they remained hard-headed and free from illusions in a world which was the very opposite of chivalrous.”

“Hey, big guy.” After a moment, he said, “Babe?” He blinked and sat up, making the gurney squeak and groan. “Guys? What’d I miss?” A better family life? Your mom and sister? The kind of great dad you deserved? I wanted to say all of that, but I didn’t. I swallowed and had to blink back a few tears. “You’re my knight in shining armor.” I hugged him hard. “You saved the damsel. Now it’s my turn.” I hugged him again.”

“The plain of Bedegraine was a forest of pavilions. They looked like old-fashioned bathing tents, and were every colour of the rainbow. ... There were heraldic devices worked or stamped on the sides ... Then there were pennons floating from the tops of the tents, and sheaves of spears leaning against them. The more sporting barons had shields or huge copper basins outside their front doors, and all you had to do was to give a thump on one of these with the butt-end of your spear, for the baron to come out like an angry bee and have a fight with you, almost before the resounding boom had died away. Sir Dinadain, who was a cheerful man, had hung a chamber-pot outside his.”

“Because you are...” Her words faded. What was he? She still remembered his kiss and her gaze dropped to his lips. Their relationship had changed. He used to be a friend, someone who shared a past with her and her family. But now, he was more than that. Every time she saw him, her heart did a strange flutter. She shook herself. He was an opponent. She should view him as she did Blaise. But she couldn’t. She didn’t want to. She longed to confide in him. But it was so dangerous. “Brilliant?” he encouraged her to continue. “Wise beyond my years?” His smile was contagious. Jaclyn rolled her eyes and turned. “And here I was going to say a good kisser.”

“In medieval times, contrary to popular belief, most knights were bandits, mercenaries, lawless brigands, skinners, highwaymen, and thieves. The supposed chivalry of Charlemagne and Roland had as much to do with the majority of medieval knights as the historical Jesus with the temporal riches and hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, or any church for that matter. Generally accompanied by their immoral entourage or servants, priests, and whores, they went from tourney to tourney like a touring rock and roll band, sports team, or gang of South Sea pirates. Court to court, skirmish to skirmish, rape to rape. Fighting as the noble's substitution for work.”

“I'd rather have a heart of gold Than all the treasure of the world.”

“It seemed to me always that there should be some tie stronger than that between man and women, though the Christians seem to think that is enough-what is it they say, it is better to marry than to burn? Well, I did not burn, for I slaked the fire, and when I had spent it, the fire went out, and yet I feel that there could be a burning which would not spend itself so quickly, and it should be such a one I could marry.”