Impatience was a vice when beginning a journey of unknown length.
The same kind of things as the rest. A sword that isn’t a sword, a golden crown of laurel leaves, a beggar’s staff, you pouring water on sand, a bloody hand and a white-hot iron, three women standing over a funeral bier with you on it, black rock wet with blood –.
She held herself with a grace and air of command that made him feel awkward and stumble-footed. She was barely tall enough to come up to his chest, but her presence was such that her height seemed the proper one, and he felt ungainly in his tallness.
A sword is dangerous to the man at the point, but not to the man at the hilt. Unless the man holding the sword is a fool, or careless, or unskilled, in which case it i twice as dangerous to him as to anyone else.
Believing because you think you know is dangerous.
Leaving something unfinished was nearly as bad as messing up the details.
He strains to hear a whisper who refuses to hear a shout.
Yes, that’s the way of your kind, isn’t it?” The Ogier’s voice changed, as if he were quoting something. “Till shade is gone, till water is gone, into the Shadow with teeth bared, screaming defiance with the last breath, to spit in Sightblinder’s eye on the Last Day.
But sometimes the change chooses you, or the Wheel chooses it for you. And sometimes the Wheel bends a life-thread, or several threads, in such a way that all the surrounding threads are forced to swirl around it, and those force other threads, and those still others, and on and on. That first bending to make the Web, that is ta’veren, and there is nothing you can do to change it, not until the Pattern itself changes. The Web – ta’maral’ailen, it’s called – can last for weeks, or for years.
You bore a hole in the boat and worry that it’s raining.
But we are alive at this moment, and before us is the hope of remaining alive. Do not surrender before you are beaten, Ogier.
People frequently continued to go on as they had been after all purpose in it had been lost.
The pale sun sat above the trees to the east, but its light was crisply dark, as if mixed with shadow. It was an awkward morning, made for unpleasant thoughts.
I kept telling them I didn’t know anything about it, but half of them seemed to think that I was lying, and the other half that I was hinting at something.
What they did not see, they could ignore; what they did not see was not really there.
Friends lightened many burdens, even those they did not know of.
Light, but a man could drown in those eyes and be happy doing it.
Even the mountains will be worn down with time.
Perhaps, knowing what Rand is, knowing how strongly ta’veren he is, I have paid too little attention to the other two ta’veren I found with him. Three ta’veren in the same village, all born within weeks of one another? That is unheard of. Perhaps you – and Mat – have larger purposes in the Pattern than you, or I, thought.
It is better to be the hammer than the nail.