About
Title: Oathbringer Authors: Brandon Sanderson Category:supplementals Number of Highlights: 47 Date: 2026-02-13 Last Highlighted: **
Highlights
The trick to happiness wasnât in freezing every momentary pleasure and clinging to each one, but in ensuring oneâs life would produce many future moments to anticipate.
Tags:happiness
âThe question,â she replied, âis not whether you will love, hurt, dream, and die. It is what you will love, why you will hurt, when you will dream, and how you will die. This is your choice. You cannot pick the destination, only the path.â
âI will take responsibility for what I have done,â Dalinar whispered. âIf I must fall, I will rise each time a better man.â
Tags:motivation,responsibility
âSometimes, a hypocrite is nothing more than a man who is in the process of changing.â
Tags:change,growth,perspective
âThe question,â she replied, âis not whether you will love, hurt, dream, and die. It is what you will love, why you will hurt, when you will dream, and how you will die. This is your choice. You cannot pick the destination, only the path.â â
The most important step a man can take. Itâs not the first one, is it? Itâs the next one. Always the next step, Dalinar.
Failure is the mark of a life well lived. In turn, the only way to live without failure is to be of no use to anyone. Trust me, Iâve practiced.â
Tags:failing,favorite,perception,stoic
âAll things exist in three realms, Dalinar,â Nohadon said. âThe Physical: what you are now. The Cognitive: what you see yourself as being. The Spiritual: the perfect you, the person beyond pain, and error, and uncertainty.â
Tags:fantasy
There are no foolish oaths. All are the mark of men and true spren over beasts and subspren. The mark of intelligence, free will, and choice.
But she had learned that nobody was strong all the time, not even Dalinar Kholin. Love wasnât about being right or wrong, but about standing up and helping when your partnerâs back was bowed. He would likely do the same for her someday.
Tags:love
Life was about momentum. Pick a direction and donât let anythingâman or stormâturn you aside.
Tags:momentum,motivation
âThere is satisfaction,â he said to Dalinar, âin creating a list of things you can actually accomplish, then removing them one at a time. As I said, a simple joy.â
Tags:habits,problem_solving
You canât spend forever floating between worlds, Cousin, she thought. Eventually youâll need to decide where you want to belong. Life was so much harder, but potentially so much more fulfilling, when you found the courage to choose.
Power was an illusion of perception, as Jasnah had said. The first step to being in control was to see yourself as capable of being in control.
Tags:confidence,control,illusion,power
Aim for the sun. That way if you miss, at least your arrow will fall far away, and the person it kills will likely be someone you donât know.â
He needed more than vague explanations and abstract ideasâbut those were the very soul of art. If you could explain something perfectly, then youâd never need art. That was the difference between a table and a beautiful woodcutting. You could explain the table: its purpose, its shape, its nature. The woodcutting you simply had to experience.
Tags:abstract,art,perception
âBut maybe you shouldnât be looking for life to be easier because you choose to do something that is right! Personally, I think life is fair. Itâs merely that often, you canât immediately see what balances it.â
âI donât mind people believing what works for them, Uncle. Thatâs something nobody ever seems to understandâI have no stake in their beliefs. I donât need company to be confident.â
Tags:confidence
Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.
Tags:virtues
âYou learn more from bad art than you do from good art, as your mistakes are more important than your successes. Plus, good art usually evokes the same emotions in peopleâmost good art is the same kind of good. But bad pieces can each be bad in their own unique way. So Iâm glad we have bad art, and Iâm sure the Almighty agrees.â
If the journey itself is indeed the most important piece, rather than the destination itself, then I traveled not to avoid dutyâbut to seek it.
It becomes the responsibility of every man, upon realizing he lacks the truth, to seek it out.
Tags:responsibility,truth
âDo you wish,â Wit asked, âthat you could go back to not being able to see?â âNo,â she whispered. âThen live. And let your failures be part of you.â
Tags:failing
âWelcome to war, Evi,â Dalinar said, heading toward the door. âThere are no unequivocal wins. Just victories that leave fewer of your friends dead than others.â
Tags:war
âThe best indication of what human beings will do is not what they think, but what the record says similar groups have done in the past.â
âPower is a knife,â Wit said, taking his seat. âA terrible, dangerous knife that canât be wielded without cutting yourself. We joked about stupidity, but in reality most people arenât stupid. Many are simply frustrated at how little control they have over their lives. They lash out. Sometimes in spectacular waysâŠâ
Tags:power
Lunamor didnât push Renarin to talk. Some people you wanted to press, draw them out. Others you wanted to let move at their own pace. Like the difference between a stew you brought to a boil and one you kept at a simmer.
Tags:communication
âI love tradition,â Dalinar said to Kadash. âIâve fought for tradition. I make my men follow the codes. I uphold Vorin virtues. But merely being tradition does not make something worthy, Kadash. We canât just assume that because something is old it is right.â
Art is about emotion, examination, and going places people have never gone before to discover and investigate new things. The only way to create something that nobody hates is to ensure that it canât be loved either. Remove enough spice from soup, and youâll just end up with water.â
Tags:art
What was that small spren that had crept out from beneath Eshonaiâs corpse? It looked like a small ball of white fire; it gave off little rings of light and trailed a streak behind it. Like a comet.
Any chef worth his spoons learned to talk, because cooking was an artâand art was subjective. One man could love an ice sculpture while another thought it boring. It was the same with food and drink. It did not make the food broken, or the person broken, to not be liked.
Tags:art,communication
âThey will try,â Jasnah said, âto define you by something you are not. Donât let them. I can be a scholar, a woman, a historian, a Radiant. People will still try to classify me by the thing that makes me an outsider. They want, ironically, the thing I donât do or believe to be the prime marker of my identity. I have always rejected that, and will continue to do so.â
Tags:identity
âInappropriate?â Pattern said. âSuch as ⊠dividing by zero?â
âTen spears go to battle,â he whispered, âand nine shatter. Did that war forge the one that remained? No, Amaram. All the war did was identify the spear that would not break.â
Tags:resilience,war
âIâm broken.â âWho isnât? Life breaks us, Teft. Then we fill the cracks with something stronger.â
Tags:problem_solving
âPlan every battle as if you will inevitably retreat, but fight every battle like there is no backing down.â
âWords are important,â Gavilar said. âMuch more than you give them credit for being.â âPerhaps,â Dalinar said. âBut if they were all-powerful, you wouldnât need my sword, would you?â âPerhaps. I canât help feeling words would be enough, if only I knew the right ones to say.â
Tags:communication
You could not arrive at excellence by the average of these people. Excellence was an individual quest, not a group effort.
âOne can believe in a story without believing it happened.â
Power could be an illusion of perception. Even within yourself.
She crouched in a dim room, hands touching the smooth stone floor, which had been eroded by thousands upon thousands of footfalls. If stone met a man, stone might winâbut if stone met humanity, then no force could preserve it.
âThe men like you, Sig, and they put a lot of stock in what you have to say. But you should try to understand what they want out of life, and respect that, rather than projecting onto them what you think they should want out of life.â
You should never debate an idiot, Shallan. No more than youâd use your best sword to spread butter.â
Honorâs power, during a storm, is concentrated in one place, the Stormfather said. It pierces all three realms and brings Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual together momentarily in one. The gemstones, exposed to the wonder of the Spiritual Realm, are lit by the infinite power there.
âEvery moment in our lives seems trivial,â Zahel said. âMost are forgotten while some, equally humble, become the points upon which history pivots. Like white on black.â
All life worked in concert, heâd been taught in his youth. Everything but men, who refused their place. Who destroyed instead of added.
âShallan, youâre their commander. Maybe not their military commander, as theyâre a civil guard, but it amounts to the same thing. Leave them idle, make them assume theyâre inconsequential, and youâll ruin them. Give them something important to do instead, work theyâll be proud of, and theyâll serve you with honor. A failed soldier is often one that has been failed.â