About
Title: The Way of Kings Authors: Brandon Sanderson Category:supplementals Number of Highlights: 45 Date: 2025-06-11 Last Highlighted: **
Highlights
âThe purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon. Too often, we forget that.â
Tags:communication,favorite,problem_solving,story
A manâs emotions are what define him, and control is the hallmark of true strength. To lack feeling is to be dead, but to act on every feeling is to be a child.â
Tags:stoic
âIgnorance is hardly unusual, Miss Davar. The longer I live, the more I come to realize that it is the natural state of the human mind. There are many who will strive to defend its sanctity and then expect you to be impressed with their efforts.â
But expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack.
Tags:act,motivation
âThe finest defense of character is correct action. Acquaint yourself with virtue, and you can expect proper treatment from those around you.â
Tags:action,favorite,stoic,virtues
âAnd so, does the destination matter? Or is it the path we take? I declare that no accomplishment has substance nearly as great as the road used to achieve it. We are not creatures of destinations. It is the journey that shapes us. Our callused feet, our backs strong from carrying the weight of our travels, our eyes open with the fresh delight of experiences lived.
Sometimes we find it hardest to accept in others that which we cling to in ourselves.
Tags:acceptance,favorite,perception
Strength does not make one capable of rule; it makes one capable of service.
Tags:favorite,leadership,stoic
The means by which we achieve victory are as important as the victory itself.â
Tags:stoic
âLife before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.â â
Tags:death,favorite,life,stoic,strength
âWhen we are young,â Jasnah said, âwe want simple answers. There is no greater indication of youth, perhaps, than the desire for everything to be as it should. As it has ever been.â
Tags:experience,perception,youth
âIt strikes me that religionâin its essenceâseeks to take natural events and ascribe supernatural causes to them. I, however, seek to take supernatural events and find the natural meanings behind them. Perhaps that is the final dividing line between science and religion. Opposite sides of a card.â
Bitterness is repaid more often than kindness.
âWell, I myself find that respect is like manure. Use it where needed, and growth will flourish. Spread it on too thick, and things just start to smell.â
âI will protect those who cannot protect themselves,â he whispered. The Second Ideal of the Knights Radiant.
Tags:fantasy
The body needs many different foods to remain healthy. And the mind needs many different ideas to remain sharp.
âAuthority doesnât come from a rank,â Kaladin said, fingering the spheres in his pocket. âWhere does it come from?â âFrom the men who give it to you. Thatâs the only way to get it.â
Tags:leadership
But weakness can imitate strength if bound properly, just as cowardice can imitate heroism if given nowhere to flee.â
Tags:perception,strength
It was the warmth of decisions made and purpose seized. It was responsibility.
Tags:decisions,responsibility
âToo many scholars think of research as purely a cerebral pursuit. If we do nothing with the knowledge we gain, then we have wasted our study. Books can store information better than we canâwhat we do that books cannot is interpret. So if one is not going to draw conclusions, then one might as well just leave the information in the texts.â
âIf I should die,â Dalinar said, âthen I would do so having lived my life right. It is not the destination that matters, but how one arrives there.â
Tags:death,perspective
The key to fighting isnât lack of passion, itâs controlled passion. Care about winning. Care about those you defend. You have to care about something.
We remember the good times and the bad ones, forgetting that most times are neither good nor bad. They just are.â
Tags:act,perspective
âChronic competence, I should guess. Sheâs been so successful in life that she has unrealistic expectations of others.â
Tags:expectation,lol,success
A scholar knows not to waste time rediscovering information already known. Itâs a lesson I sometimes forget.â
Tags:knowledge
âBecause some people are frightened of knowledge. Your father is a learned man; he knows things the others canât understand. So those things must be dark and mysterious.â
Tags:knowledge
For the substance of our existence is not in the achievement, but in the method. The Monarch must understand this; he must not become so focused on what he wishes to accomplish that he diverts his gaze from the path he must take to arrive there.â
Tags:motivation,systems
Jasnah was only thirty-four years old, yet many felt she would already have obtained the cap of a master scholar if it werenât for her vocal denunciations of religion. Most specifically, she denounced the devotaries, the various religious congregations that proper Vorin people joined.
Tags:religion
Those who truly seek wisdom are those who will acknowledge the virtue in their adversaries and who will learn from those who disabuse them of error.
âMust someone, some unseen thing, declare what is right for it to be right? I believe that my own moralityâwhich answers only to my heartâis more sure and true than the morality of those who do right only because they fear retribution.â
âPeople see in stories what theyâre looking for, my young friend.â
Tags:story
This was a Basic Lashing, first of his three kinds of Lashings. It gave him the ability to manipulate whatever force, spren, or god it was that held men to the ground. With this Lashing, he could bind people or objects to different surfaces or in different directions.
You see, Sadeas, you make it too easy. An uneducated, half-brained serving boy with a hangover could make mock of you. I am left with no need to exert myself, and your very nature makes mockery of my mockery. And so it is that through sheer stupidity you make me look incompetent.â
âI have spent too much of my time worrying about what people think, Navani. When I thought my time had arrived, I realized that all my worrying had been wasted. In the end, I was pleased with how I had lived my life.â
Tags:anxiety,perception
âEuphoria passes. It is usually brief, so we spend more time longing for it than enjoying it.â
âWhy do they treat us so, Moash? Because they know they should be better than they are. Because they see discipline in bridgemen, and it embarrasses them. Rather than bettering themselves, they take the easier road of jeering at us.â
Tags:perspective
âToo many of us,â she said, âtake great pains with what we ingest through our mouths, and far less with what we partake of through our ears and eyes. Wouldnât you say?â
The hallmark of insecurity is bravado.
Tags:ego
Expect honor from those you meet, and give them the chance to live up to it.
Tags:communication,honor
âTradition is the blind witness they use to condemn us, Teft,â Kaladin said. âItâs the pretty box they use to wrap up their lies. It makes us serve them.â
Tags:past,social_construct,society
âSpren appear when something changesâwhen fear appears, or when it begins to rain. They are the heart of change, and therefore the heart of all things.â
The monarch is like this man, stumbling along, the weight of a kingdom on his shoulders. Many give way before him, but so few are willing to step in and help carry the stone. They do not wish to attach themselves to the work, lest they condemn themselves to a life full of extra burdens.
Tags:fantasy,leadership
That word had strange effects on men. Some ran when you used it. Others grew nervous. Teft seemed to long for it.
âEvery pasture needs three things,â the woman said, voice changing, as if she were quoting from memory. âFlocks to grow, herdsmen to tend, and watchers at the rim. We of Alethela are those watchersâthe warriors who protect and fight. We maintain the terrible arts of killing, then pass them on to others when the Desolation comes.â
Tags:war
Szethâs honor would not allow him to betray his mission or seek death. But if that death occurred, he would welcome it.