The Magic Of Recluce Quotes
"Perfection, especially for a youngster learning about it from cheerfully sober adults, has a price. Mine was boredom, scarcely novel for a young man in the middle of his second decade."
"Perfection, Lerris," my father repeated time after time, "is the price we pay for the good life. Perfection keeps destruction away and provides a safe harbor for the good."
"Order is not boring. You are bored with order."
"Of course it’s complicated. Perfection is always complicated. Do you want your work to last? Or do you want it to fall apart at the first touch of chaos?"
"The masters are responsible for ensuring that things in Recluce are what they seem to be, for rooting out self-deception, and for maintaining our physical defenses against the Outer Kingdoms."
"Survival isn’t life…but I didn’t come down to preach."
"Don’t ever settle for just survival, son. Survival isn’t life…but I didn’t come down to preach."
"Believe it or not, our interest is in saving your lives, not spending them."
"It’s just…your father, to even speak there…and you’re younger than anyone here…and you have to do dangergeld…"
"Everything is the same. Every day in Recluce people get up and do the same things. They do them as perfectly as possible for as long as possible. Then they die. If that’s not meaningless and boring, I don’t know what is."
"Honest order prevents evil. That is a truth of life, and also of magic."
"So... you are saying that avoiding starvation is boring? That having happy and well-fed people is boring?"
"If you destroy a tree for firewood to warm a freezing child, you have still given yourself to chaos."
"Because your doubts and your open skepticism are enough to disrupt anyone who spends much time with you."
"You must travel Candar beyond the Easthorns to the Westhorns, and you must not return until you feel you are ready."
"They don’t care how hard you try. They don’t care how much you learn. They don’t care."
"They go by what works. If we get in the way...then we go."
"It's not really fair, you know. They don’t love."
"You didn't know your father was a high temple master?"
"It's...hard...I look at you. You had everything. And..."
"For all of the pleasant surroundings, they still don’t really care."
"One good action does not make a man good. Nor does a single wrong action make a good man evil."
"A deed is a deed. Do you believe that appearances can really deceive, young lady?"
"You are magister-born, a born magician if you will, like it or not, and all magicians must choose a path—black, white, or, for a few, gray."
"No place I really want to discuss. Do you want to borrow the book?"
"If you wish to travel with me, you must decide on something. Because, undecided, you are a target for every free spirit, and every chaos-master, in Eastern Candar."
"Just reach out with your thoughts, not your hands, and I will show you the answers…"
"You have noticed, I am certain, how reluctant the Masters of Recluce are in using their powers for good beyond the isle itself."
"Chaos corrupts the soul. The more corrupt the soul, the faster it ages a body. Each transfer exhausts both body and soul."
"The Basis of Order is what it’s called. All of the black magicians use it."
"You beckoned to all of them, and you have very few defenses against…deep temptations."
"Refusing to choose is a choice. In your case, your choice is more limited because of what you are."
"I could say so, but either I would be lying or you wouldn’t believe me."
"Strength rises to strength. If I had really tried to take you over, not just isolate you, one of us would be dead."
"Whatever the potion was that smelted like senthow, it killed my shakes and returned me to the realm of the living—the tired living."
"Order is life; chaos is death. This is fact, not belief."
"In contrast, control of chaos is simply the ability to sever one ordered element of the world from another…focused destruction…"
"How did the philosophy I had just read have anything to do with escaping the whiteness in which Justen had attempted to trap me?"
"Once they control your thoughts, the body comes next."
"That wanting something badly can let someone else enter your thoughts or body…"
"Will and understanding are the keys, Lerris. Not just to mastering order, but to mastering anything."
"Healthy sheep bear healthy lambs and good wool. Each year, I check the ewes and the breeding rams to ensure only the healthy ones are bred."
"Destruction is almost always easier than construction."
"You can’t think and learn if you’re always on the run."
"All things are not possible, even to the greatest."
"Learning without understanding can but increase the frustration of the impatient."
"She could cook, and she always had a pleasant, if shy, smile."
"Every time I acted without thinking, I exposed myself."
"I don’t flatter. It’s not Destrin, poor soul. It’s you."
"I've got to check Bostric," I explained as I left.
"Tell the captain that we will accomplish his objective."
"The olive groves may suffer, but the autarch needs trained troops more than olives."
"You! What are you doing here?" The nearer guard lowered the halberd slightly.
"You still supporting that broken-down crafter? Why don’t you open your own shop?"
"I didn’t like what I was about to do, but, again, there wasn’t any choice."
"Thank you. I regret having to leave so soon, but…"
"If that’s the case, neither one is going to be very happy with me."
"I’m glad you feel that way, but I’m also glad you refused Deirdre."
"I know. You don’t like the darkness. Neither do I."
"We used to receive the pilgrims from Recluce, but seldom do we see them any more."
"Then I waited in the hiring hall until the new duke took over and agreed to terms with Recluce."
"He’s enough of a horse to have carried me through the Easthorns and the Little Easthorns."
"I doubted the theory, especially considering the effort it took me to accomplish generally minor tasks like neutralizing chaos fountains and order-trapping bridges."
"You need to find some answers inside yourself first, I think."
"Knowledge belongs to those who seek it, not those who deny it or flee it."
"You came to me. You are seeking answers, after all."
"I'm not sure that a wizard's seeking answers entitles him to receive them."
"With each thread grew the river of tears that should have flowed from the Westhorns to the Easthorns and emptied into the Great North Bay or into the Gulf of Candar."
"The more I learned and the more I could do, the more complex it got."
"She didn’t like you?... If she was pretty..."
"I found her attractive. She was capable and bright. That just made it worse."
"I’m not a military strategist, and I don’t appreciate being accused, even silently, of incompetence."
"We eat a lot of goats, cheese, and olives these days. And beans. We mustn’t forget the beans."
"The whole place reeked of being unfinished, clearly finished as it was."
"I did what I could, but her soul is twisted into the tightest order-knot within..."
"I had only seen them from a distance, but the gray wizard had himself another apprentice."
"All the bowing and scraping was already getting to me, and it had barely been an eight-day since I had stumbled from the ruins of Antonin’s castle."
"Bravado, luck, and applying whatever skill I had—that was what I had done, not quite like the effort to do a chest or table perfectly."
9179812
9179812