Top 200 Bernard Cornwell Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You won’t regret the men you never killed, but you will regret the women you passed up.”

— Bernard Cornwell

2. “Every day is ordinary, until it isn’t.”

— Bernard Cornwell

3. “My name is Uhtred. I am the son of Uhtred, who was the son of Uhtred and his father was also called Uhtred.”

— Bernard Cornwell

4. “There are seasons of our lives when nothing seems to be happening, when no smoke betrays a burned town or homestead and few tears are shed for the newly dead. I have learned not to trust those times, because if the world is at peace then it means someone is planning war.”

— Bernard Cornwell

5. “We all suffer from dreams.”

— Bernard Cornwell

6. “We make children and wealth and amass land and build halls and assemble armies and give great feasts, but only one thing survives us. Reputation.”

— Bernard Cornwell

7. “At sea, sometimes, if you take a ship too far from land and the wind rises and the tide sucks with a venomous force and the waves splinter white above the shield-pegs, you have no choice but to go where the gods will.”

— Bernard Cornwell

8. “I remember Ragnar laughing one day. “It is so kind of the Christians! They put their wealth in one building and mark it with a great cross! It makes life so easy.”

— Bernard Cornwell

9. “Play with the devil,” Finan said, “and you get burned.”

— Bernard Cornwell

10. “The existence of tricks does not imply the absence of magic.”

— Bernard Cornwell

11. “Of course some days are easier than others, but my worst day is better than being in most humdrum occupations.”

— Bernard Cornwell

12. “A leader leads,” Ragnar said, “and you can’t ask men to risk death if you’re not willing to risk it yourself.”

— Bernard Cornwell

13. “Only a fool takes pride in pretending that a skill he doesn’t possess is worthless.”

— Bernard Cornwell

14. “I’m in pain all the time,′ I said, ’and if I gave into it then I’d do nothing.”

— Bernard Cornwell

15. “The bards sing of love, they celebrate slaughter, they extol kings and flatter queens, but were I a poet I would write in praise of friendship.”

— Bernard Cornwell

16. “Robin Hood’s Lament”?’ Every archer knew that tune.”

— Bernard Cornwell

17. “When men do evil and claim that they are doing God’s work, then they are at their most dangerous.”

— Bernard Cornwell

18. “Looking back, of course, it was irresponsible, mad, forlorn, idiotic, but if you don’t take chances then you’ll never have a winning hand, and I’ve no regrets.”

— Bernard Cornwell

19. “Latin! The language of God! Or perhaps He speaks Hebrew? I suppose that’s more likely and it will make things rather awkward in heaven, won’t it? Will we all have to learn Hebrew?”

— Bernard Cornwell

20. “All that was needed to get ahead in the world was a bit of sense and the ability to kick a bastard faster than the bastard could kick you, and Richard Sharpe reckoned he had those talents right enough.”

— Bernard Cornwell

21. “So far it’s 43 books in 25 years.”

— Bernard Cornwell

22. “An archbishop is important to the Christians, he knows more sorcery than ordinary priests, even more than the bishops, and he has more authority. I have met several archbishops over the years and there was not one of them I would trust to run a market stall selling carrots.”

— Bernard Cornwell

23. “We should know who they are,” I said, “before we kill them. That’s just being polite.”

— Bernard Cornwell

24. “They smile and sing their psalms and preach that their creed is all about love, but tell them you believe in a different god and suddenly it’s all spittle and spite.”

— Bernard Cornwell

25. “Yule is supposed to be a celebration and a consolation, a moment of warm brightness in the heart of winter, a time to eat because you know that the lean times are coming when food will be scarce and ice locks the land, and a time to be happy and get drunk and behave irresponsibly and wake up the next morning wondering if you will ever feel well again, but the West Saxons handed the feast to the priests who made it as joyous as a funeral.”

— Bernard Cornwell

26. “We live by oaths and we can die by them. To give an oath is to harness a life to a promise, and to break an oath is to tempt the punishment of the gods.”

— Bernard Cornwell

27. “If you roll the dice often enough you always get the numbers you want. If I tell you the sun will shine tomorrow and that it will rain and there will be snow and that clouds will cover the sky and that wind will blow and that it will be a calm day and that thunder will deafen us, then one of those things will turn out to be true and you’ll forget the rest because you want to believe that I really can tell the future.”

— Bernard Cornwell

28. “The fear came then. The shield wall is a terrible place. It is where a warrior makes his reputation, and reputation is dear to us. Reputation is honour, but to gain that honour a man must stand in the shield wall where death runs rampant. I had been in the shield wall at Cynuit and I knew the smell of death, the stink of it, the uncertainty of survival, the horror of the axes and swords and spears, and I feared it. And it was coming.”

— Bernard Cornwell

29. “I was born a Saxon, but raised by Danes, my daughter had married a Norseman, my dearest friend was Irish, my woman was a Saxon, the mother of my children had been Danish, my gods were pagan, and my oath was sworn to AEthelflaed, a Christian. Whose side was I on?”

— Bernard Cornwell

30. “You’re the son of a king,’ I told him, ’and one day you might be a king yourself. Life and death will be your gifts, so learn how to give them, boy.”

— Bernard Cornwell

31. “Only a fool wants war, but once a war starts then it cannot be fought half-heartedly. It cannot even be fought with regret, but must be waged with a savage joy in defeating the enemy, and it is that savage joy that inspires our bards to write their greatest songs about love and war.”

— Bernard Cornwell

32. “Beware the man who loves battle. Ravn had told me that only one man in three or perhaps one man in four is a real warrior and the rest are reluctant fighters, but I was to learn that only one man in twenty is a lover of battle. Such men were the most dangerous, the most skillful, the ones who reaped the souls, and the ones to fear.”

— Bernard Cornwell

33. “Obadiah Hakeswill had never been concerned by such enmity. Power did not lie in being liked, but in being feared.”

— Bernard Cornwell

34. “I am Uhtred, son of Uhtred, who was the son of Uhtred, and his father was also called Uhtred, and they were all lords of Bebbanburg. I am that too, though these days folk call me the Lord of the North. My lands stretch from the wind-beaten North Sea to the shores facing Ireland and, though I am old, my task is to stop the Scots coming south into the land we have learned to call Englaland.”

— Bernard Cornwell

35. “The Gods play games with us, but if we open ourselves then we can become a part of the game instead of its victims.”

— Bernard Cornwell

36. “Put a cat to watch a flock and the wolves eat well.”

— Bernard Cornwell

37. “May the gods always send me stupid enemies.”

— Bernard Cornwell

38. “But we do not choose our deaths. The Norns do that at the foot of Yggdrasil and I imagined one of those three Fates holding the shears above my thread. She was ready to cut, and all that mattered now was to keep tight hold of my sword so that the winged women would take me to Valhalla’s feasting-hall.”

— Bernard Cornwell

39. “That is why battles of the shield wall are slow to start. Men have to nerve themselves for the horror.”

— Bernard Cornwell

40. “Arrows of insight have to be winged by the feathers of speculation.”

— Bernard Cornwell

41. “Laughter in battle. That was what Ragnar had taught me, to take joy from the fight.”

— Bernard Cornwell

42. “You know what circumcision is, Private?”

— Bernard Cornwell

43. “I recalled that a man named Judas had betrayed the nailed god. That never made any sense to me. The god had to be nailed to a cross if he was to become their savior, and then the Christians blame the man who made that death possible. I thought they should worship him as a saint, but instead they revile him as a betrayer.”

— Bernard Cornwell

44. “You should always plan your battles form the enemy’s point of view.”

— Bernard Cornwell

45. “God offers his protection to sinners,” Ceolnoth said unctuously. “Especially to sinners,” Ceolberht said. “I’ll remember that,” I said, “when I’ve finished sinning.”

— Bernard Cornwell

46. “I had the arrogant confidence of a man born to battle. I am Uhtred, son of Uhtred, son of another Uhtred, and we had not held Bebbanburg and its lands by whimpering at altars. We are warriors.”

— Bernard Cornwell

47. “I was doing everything wrong. I was confused. Confusion is inevitable in battle, but indecision is unforgivable, and I had hesitated to make any decision and then made all the wrong ones.”

— Bernard Cornwell

48. “Love is a voyage too, a voyage with no destination except death, but a voyage of bliss.”

— Bernard Cornwell

49. “The world began in chaos and it will end in chaos. The gods brought the world into existence, and they will end it when they fight among themselves, but in between the chaos of the world’s birth and the chaos of the world’s death is order, and order is made by oaths, and oaths bind us like the buckles of a harness.”

— Bernard Cornwell

50. “What happens to you, Uhtred, is what you make happen. You will grow, you will learn the sword, you will learn the way of the shield wall, you will learn the oar, you will give honor to the gods, and then you will use what you have learned to make your life good or bad.”

— Bernard Cornwell