The best Quotes by Bernard Cornwell

It is not the harp, but the hand that plays it.

Only the gods tell him what to do, and you should beware of men who take their orders from the gods.

Pride makes a man, it drives him, it is the shield wall around his reputation. Men die, they said, but reputation does not die.

Arrows of insight have to be winged by the feathers of speculation.

I have learned that it is one thing to kill in battle, to send a brave man's soul to the corpse hall of the gods, but quite another to take a helpless man's life.

Fear might work on a man, but confidence fights against fear.

An army, I learned in time, needs a head. It needs one man to lead it, but give an army two leaders and you halve its strength.

War is fought in mystery. The truth can take days to travel, and ahead of truth flies rumor, and it is ever hard to know what is really happening, and the art of it is to pluck the clean bone of fact from the rotting flesh of fear and lies.

Laughter in battle. That was what Ragnar had taught me, to take joy from the fight.