Proverbs

Proverbs is a page for proverbs and other sayings - listed alphabetically - which can be found in the 'Malazan' books of Steven Erikson and Ian C. Esslemont.

One brief definition of proverb is —
"A short, often traditional, saying that expresses some obvious truth or familiar experience".

Some common synonyms of proverb are —
Adage; catchphrase; epigram/epigraph; maxim; motto; precept; saw; or saying.
Sayings can be: common; oracular; pithy; and/or wise in nature.

For those interested, an in-depth discussion of proverb can be found in the Wikipedia article at: Proverb

Contents:

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

Notes and references

A

• Abject misery lies not in what the blanket reveals, but in what it hides.
• A Book of Prophecy opens the door. You need a second book to close it.
• A flower cut from its root quickly dies.
• Age did such things, feeding the desire then starving the will.
• Age was a demon...It seemed a miserable reward for surviving...which was proof enough that life was a fool's bargain.
• A god walking mortal earth trails blood.
• A half-blood walked the gutter between two worlds, despised by both.
• A life lived is a life of regrets...
• All that breaks
  must be discarded
  even as the thunder
  of faith returns
  ever fading
  echoes.
• Always an even trade.
• A man who stirs awake the serpent [i.e. Eleint] is a man without fear. A man without fear has forgotten the rules of life.
• An army that waits is soon at war with itself.
• A noble man...[nobility] that's earned, the only kind that means anything.
• An old sword, pitted and blunt and nicked, that cuts clean to the heart.
• Anticipation is the sweetest nectar...
• As vows are sworn, so are they reaped.
• At night ghosts come
  In rivers of grief,
  To claw away the sand
  Beneath a man's feet
• A wounded animal is the most dangerous.

B

• Battle is for an army to win or lose; war is for civilization to win of lose.
• Be careful who you invite into your camp.
• Be not too rigid
  For you will shatter;
  Be not too yielding,
  For you will be bowed.
• Better to walk into a trap you can see than one you can't.
• Beware the leader who has nothing to lose.
• Blood runs/flows down.
• Blood and tribe first. All others are enemy.
• Businesses are the vultures of war...

C

• Call yourself an artist and you can get away with anything.
• Children are dying!
• Children from a dark house choose shadowed paths.
• Competence was no gift when it arrived too late.
• Convergence. Power ever draws other power.

D

• Dance by limb, dance by word. Witness!
• Death shall be my bridge.
• Does not a teller of tales serve oneself first and last?
• Dragons play no games.

E

• East to the sun's rise
  North to winter's face
  South to where stars are born
  West to the road of death.
• Even a drunk knows a fool.
• Even a man who has lived a life of sorrows will ask for one more day.
• Even a mediocre man could climb into greatness by the simple act of dying.
• Even the best laid plans.
• Even the fiercest mask can crack in the heat.
• Every hero needs a poet [to] make them famous...
• Everyone has a price.
• Every throne is an arrow-butt.
• Evil: smelling of sweet lies and bitter truths.

F

• Falsehoods cease being false when enough people believe them.
• Fame is fleeting...
• ...familiarity was the seed of contempt...
• Fear is fear. It has no logic.
• Fear is a potent weapon...but fear can fuel hate...which is far stronger.
• First in, last out.
• Five wings will buy you a grovel...
• For all the rivers this world over do flow in but one
  Direction.
• For all the terror waiting in the gloved hands of an assassin, it was as nothing against a professional soldier.
• For there to be rich, there must be poor, and more of the latter than the former.

G

• Generally speaking, people useless at everything else become academics.
• Give an imbecile a torch and you will get a fire.
• ...gods fear mortals more than they do each other.
• Greed is the knife in the sheath of ambition.

H

• HAIL THE MARINES!
• He set out, boots crunching on the [frozen] dead.
  Returned to the world.
  Draconus.
• History comforts the dull-witted.
• History consists of nothing more than the lies we tell ourselves to justify the present.
• How many times...will you walk the same path?

I

• I am not yet done.
• If righteousness was easy...it would not shine like gold.
• "I have had...enough...of...your...justice!"
• I have reached an age when youth itself is beauty.
• In a land where
  Seven cities rose in gold,
  Even the dust has eyes.
• In for a penny, in for a crown [a coin].
• In for a pinch in for a pound [a unit of weight].
• In life's last days, the white and the cold will lie in the bed of the old.
• In war we punish our children with a broken legacy of blood.
• I ride the Whirlwind!
• Is it not so that better...ancients had been men and women of worth than to possess things of worth?
• Is there anything more worthless than excuses?
• It don't fair the wind to spit in the sea.
• It is the horror of war that, with each newly arrived generation, the nightmare is reprised by innocents.
• It is the wise wolf that follows every spoor, no matter how slight.

K

• Know your enemy better than they know themselves.

L

• Last in, looking around...
• Lead us, Warleader.
• Leave murder to those whose souls are already stained.
• Let sleeping dogs lie.
• Light strikes
  Dark smothers
  Shadow goes round.
• Like attracts like.
• Looking back
  is a flame in the eyes.
  Best not to linger like flies
  in the refuse we have made.

M

• Madness is simply a state of mind.
• Memories are not the truth of the past.
• Memories are woven tapestries hiding hard walls.
• Mockery is just hate's patina, and every laugh is vicious.

N

• Never bargain with a man who has nothing to lose.
• Not even the dead know the end to war.
• Nothing was fair. Nothing.
• "...not yet done..."
• No tyrant could thrive where every subject said no.

O

• Of all the weapons we turn upon ourselves, guilt is the sharpest...
• ...one can never carry too much rope.
• One good betrayal deserves another.
• One salient fact that labourers well know, but appears to be lost on those who fanatically exercise, is that the body, its organs, its muscles and its bones, will inevitably wear out.
• Only an Ascendant could slay another Ascendant.
• Only the dead should be certain of anything.
• Open to them your hand to the shore, watch them walk into the sea.
• Out of death comes life.

P

• Paranoia's the assassin's bedmate.
• People in charge always survive, when everyone else gets slaughtered.
• Poetry and sorcery were the twin edges to the knife in every man's heart.
• Positing a question does not magically create an answer.
• Power ever draws other power.
• Prod and pull.
• Push and pull.

Q

• Quon pays so that Tali can fight.

R

• Rage in battle was...a gift of the gods.
• ...regrets are as nothing. The value lies in how they are answered.
• Revelry is a flight, a frenzied fleeing from the misery of daily existence.

S

• Sail today to fight tomorrow.
• Salt of the earth.
• Scholars make a career of not agreeing on anything.
• Shadow is ever besieged...whilst darkness devours and light steals.
• Sha'ik Reborn!
• ...shaved knuckle in the hole.
• Show me a man who can't smoke and you're looking at the end of civilization.
• Sieges are like being thrust into the fire . . . they have a way of changing people.
• Some things never do change.
• Speak truth, grow still, until the water is clear between us.
• Strong as the walls of Heng.

T

• That is one curse we all share - the will to live.
• The beetle that walks slowly has nothing to fear.
• The dead are beyond shame.
• The dead do not sleep. While the living do not live.
• The dead never interrupt, they but arrive.
• The end of the world is announced with a kind word.
• The frog atop the stack of coins dare not jump.
• The harder the world, the fiercer the honour.
• The miracle of hindsight is how it transforms great military geniuses of the past into incompetent idiots, and incompetent idiots of the present into great military geniuses.
• The more laws a land has, the more corrupt it is.
• The object of justice is to drain the world of colour.
• The only real curse is when you find yourself the last of your kind.
• The people in charge never listen to the people in the know.
• The problem with paths is that once you have chosen one,
  You cannot choose the others.
• The purest book
  is the one never opened.
• There are folds in this shadow...hiding entire worlds.
• There are tides beneath every tide
  And the surface of water
  Holds no weight.
• There is no death in light.
• There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail — should we fall — we will know that we have lived.
• There is plenty of room for guilt in the heart of hate.
• There will always be innocent victims in the pursuit of evil.
• The role of victim in nature is ephemeral, and that which is fed upon in time feed upon the feeders...
• ...the sea...does not dream of you.
• The sea was like a drunk's mouth: there was no telling what might come out of it. Or go back in.
• ...the scent is ever sweeter over the garden wall.
• The shore is blind to the sea.
• The slower the river, the redder it runs.
• The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief.
• The stars wheel. Let us ride.
  Lead us, Warleader.
  The stars wheel. Lead us Warleader, into glory.
• The truth of then is not the truth of now.
• The wise learn more from their enemies than fools learn from their friends.
• Time makes of us believers. Timelessness makes of us unbelievers.
• Time promised everything and delivered nothing.
• To be Shake was to know grief.
• Truth hides in colourless clothes.
• Twice as far as you think
  Half the distance you fear
• Tyranny has no sense of humor.
• Tyranny remains because the weak and fearful seek it.

U

• Unwitnessed : (we shall be our own witness).

W

• War forged bonds closer knit than those of bloodkin.
• Warrior, fix your gaze outward!
• War with Nom Purge is just the Talians keeping in practice.
• Wealth yields little succour when the soul spends too freely...
• We are not born innocent, simply unmeasured.
• We cannot learn without pain.
• We cling to the foolish belief that simple solutions exist.
• We lie about our past to make peace with the present.
• We walk the same path, some farther along, some further back, but still and for ever more the same path.
• We were never what people could be.
  We were only what we were.
• What is an old man but a pile of fading leaves?
• What is the Deck of Dragons
  But where one bends to look
  For reflections
  Of all things unseen?
• What the soul can house, flesh cannot fathom.
• When a ruler is murdered, a thousand blades are drawn, and the weak become savage.
• When the gods of dust were young
  They swam in blood.
• When the host weakens, the parasites fatten.
• When you do not recognize the wrongs of the past, the future takes its revenge.
• Where hides the gravest threat? Why, the one you invite into your camp.
• Where pleasure is not possible...neither is pain.
• Who needs swords when we have our tongues?
• Wide-eyed stupid.
• Wisdom comes from the country [i.e., from a rural area].
• Wisdom lives only in hindsight.
• Wisdom unfurls like a flower in a pile of dung.
• Without followers, civilization would never have been born.
• Witness!
• Words of wisdom [come] from a child.

Y

• You can heal wounds of the flesh well enough, but it's the other ones that can bleed out a soul.
• You cannot be remade unless you are first broken...

Notes and references

List of abbreviations • Paginations • How to reference an article