Fear triggers need, need powers sincerity. Sincerity is the required element.
I think old age is nature’s way of preparing us for death, making us more willing to take our leave of this world.
Hatred has such powerful emotions attached to it that others take it up out of fear. In that way, hate spreads like panic in a crowd.
As it turns out, that persistence is a requirement. Thus, he would tell me, you need the dark to show the light, so you shouldn’t curse darkness. You needed death to define life.
Duty?” Kahlan wiped a hand across her face. “Harold, you can’t blindly follow that woman’s whim. The route to life and liberty exists only through reason. She may be queen, but reason can be your only true sovereign. To fail to use reason in this, to fail to think, is intellectual anarchy.
He remembered Zedd telling him that old age meant that the only thing he really knew was that he would never know it all, much less know enough.
His word alone stood between Kahlan and oblivion.
He wanted this to show the raw power of volition. The man and woman he carved were his refuge against his despair over his captivity. They embodied freedom of spirit. They embodied reason rising up to triumph.
That is what we believe in and what we are fighting for. The right to the joy of life. The right to our own life. The right to love.
The power needs truth to work. Truth is reality, the laws of nature. They’re inseparable. That relationship is represented by the word woven into the hilt. That makes this sword meant to serve more than just the power. It is also meant to serve the truth. This is the Sword of Truth.
The time for desperation is upon us. Let’s play.” – Zedd.
Standing there, chisel and mallet in hand, gazing at the statue that was his vision in stone, was a moment when Richard could savor the supreme achievement of having his creation exist exactly as he had originally conceived it. For this singular moment in time, it was complete, and it was his alone.
Wizard’s First Rule: people are stupid, they believe what they want to believe.
Zedd had taught him that the creator was simply another name for the force of balance in all things, and not some wise man sitting in judgment.
Though she was ungifted, she could clearly feel the power of the magic the sword now possessed. It was power unlike anything she ever imagined. It churned the way the storm had. It held more power than the storm had. It was fury and rage and love and life all folded together over and over, blending them into the finest layers of something new, something remarkable. This was now a weapon unlike any other, more than any other.
It is not a weakness, child, to be a victim.
But who I was, who you loved, no longer exists. I have passed on. In your world, only my memory can exist. Your loyalty to me because of that memory is a part of life, but it can become disloyalty to yourself if you hold it so closely that it crowds out the rest of life.
The truth has value.
Desperately, his mind raced as he cried, trying to make time go backward, to do it again differently, to ignore the voices, to keep hold of her hand, to save her.
He wanted to know things, not reveal them.