Top 200 Bernard Cornwell Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Guinefort had been a dog and, so far as Thomas’s father knew, the only animal ever to be canonized. The beast had saved a baby from a wolf, then been martyred by his owner, who thought the dog had eaten the baby when in truth he had hidden it beneath the cot.”

— Bernard Cornwell

152. “We had to fight, because to decline battle was a defeat.”

— Bernard Cornwell

153. “And yes, there’s a simplicity to writing books because you’re not a member of a team, so you make all the decisions yourself instead of deferring to a committee.”

— Bernard Cornwell

154. “Everyone looks old to the young,” Ravn said.”

— Bernard Cornwell

155. “If the Danes are outnumbered,” my father told me that night, “they won’t fight. They’re like dogs, the Danes. Cowards at heart, but they’re given courage by being in a pack.”

— Bernard Cornwell

156. “Men fear wanderers for they have no rules. The Danes came as strangers, rootless and violent, and that, I thought, was why I was always happier in their company.”

— Bernard Cornwell

157. “His charms worked, for though the bullets flicked close none hit him. He was the tiger of Mysore, he could not die, only kill.”

— Bernard Cornwell

158. “When a man cannot fight he should curse. The gods like to feel needed.”

— Bernard Cornwell

159. “It takes a weak man to prove his strength by striking a woman.”

— Bernard Cornwell

160. “That dawn is seared on my memory, burnt there by the flames of a hall-burning. There was nothing we could do except watch.”

— Bernard Cornwell

161. “You know why farts smell?” “I don’t.” “So the deaf can enjoy them too.”

— Bernard Cornwell

162. “I wondered why the gods no longer came to earth. It would make belief so much easier.”

— Bernard Cornwell

163. “The monks had murdered Danes and Ragnar had punished them, though these days the story is always told that the monks were innocently at prayer and died as spotless martyrs. In truth they were malevolent killers of women and children, but what chance does truth have when priests tell tales?”

— Bernard Cornwell

164. “We make oaths, we make choices, but fate makes our decisions.”

— Bernard Cornwell

165. “Enemies come soon enough in a mans life,′ he told me, ’you don’t need to seek them out.”

— Bernard Cornwell

166. “My dear Lord,’ I said, but not to him. I spoke to Arthur. And I watched and wept, my arm around Ceinwyn, as the pale boat was swallowed by the shimmering silver mist. And so my Lord was gone. And no one has seen him since.”

— Bernard Cornwell

167. “That man is my Arthur, a great warlord and a hero who fought against impossible odds to such effect that even fifteen hundred years later his enemies love and revere his memory.”

— Bernard Cornwell

168. “How anyone could endure three or four hours of chanting monks and ranting priests was beyond my understanding, just as it was beyond my understanding to know why bishops needed thrones. They would be demanding crowns next.”

— Bernard Cornwell

169. “Children are easily swayed by religion, which is why it is a good thing that most eventually grow into sense. Chanting monks led the procession, then came children with green boughs, more monks, a group of abbots and bishops, then Steapa and fifty men of the royal guard, who walked immediately in front of Alfred and his guests.”

— Bernard Cornwell

170. “We were the wolf pack, we were the killers of Britain, we had fought from the south coast of Wessex to the northern wilds, from the ocean to the sea, and we had never been beaten, and these men knew it.”

— Bernard Cornwell

171. “I suspect most copies were used to wipe arses or light fires.”

— Bernard Cornwell

172. “And that, too, was the truth, that a man cannot step back from a fight and stay a man. We make much in this life if we are able. 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. I could not walk away.”

— Bernard Cornwell

173. “It’s better to make the wrong choice,” my father had continued, “than to make no choice at all.”

— Bernard Cornwell

174. “Always fight the horse, not the rider.”

— Bernard Cornwell

175. “I had thought about Alban for a while. “Why,” I had then asked, “if your god can pull out a man’s eyes, didn’t he just save Alban’s life?” “Because God chose not to, of course!” Beocca had answered sniffily, which is just the kind of answer you always get when you ask a Christian priest to explain another inexplicable act of their god.”

— Bernard Cornwell

176. “Instinct is a strange thing. You cannot touch it, feel it, smell it, or hear it, but you must trust it, and that night, as we listened to the slap of the waves and the creak of the oars, I was as certain as I could be that my fears were justified.”

— Bernard Cornwell

177. “I have a path to follow,” I said, “and it goes north. North back to Bebbanburg.”

— Bernard Cornwell

178. “I could imagine Cnut sitting there and thinking that I must join him soon, and we would raise a horn of ale together. There is no pain in Valhalla, no sadness, no tears, no broken oaths.”

— Bernard Cornwell

179. “A man who loves his daughter does not let her go into Wales.”

— Bernard Cornwell

180. “I’ll happily mentor anyone who wants mentoring, and most of that goes on by internet rather than face to face.”

— Bernard Cornwell

181. “I shook my head. ‘Killing isn’t woman’s work,’ I said. ‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘We give life, can’t we take it too?”

— Bernard Cornwell

182. “Together we would make reputation, we would have men in halls across Britain telling the story of our exploit. Or of our deaths. They were friends, they were oath-men, they were young, they were warriors, and with such men it might be possible to storm the gates of Asgard itself.”

— Bernard Cornwell

183. “There is such joy in a good ship, and a greater joy to have the ship’s belly fat with other men’s silver. It is the Viking joy, driving a dragon-headed hull through a wind-driven sea towards a future full of feasts and laughter. The Danes taught me that and I love them for it.”

— Bernard Cornwell

184. “Pride, I suppose, is the most treacherous of virtues. The Christians call it a sin, but no poet sings of men who have no pride. Christians say the meek will inherit the earth, but the meek inspire no songs.”

— Bernard Cornwell

185. “Language is now my trade, boy, because I have become a skald.’ ‘A skald?’ ‘A scop, you would call me. A poet, a weaver of dreams, a man who makes glory from nothing and dazzles you with its making. And my job now is to tell this day’s tale in such a way that men will never forget our great deeds.”

— Bernard Cornwell

186. “I know nothing about producing TV drama and any involvement on my part is liable to prove an obstacle to the producers, so I prefer to be a cheerleader and let them get on with it.”

— Bernard Cornwell

187. “He needed to know it, see it, smell it, and survive it. I was training the boy not just to be a warrior, but to be a king.”

— Bernard Cornwell

188. “Research is a lifelong occupation so it’s hard to factor it in, but I reckon most books take 5 months from start to finish.”

— Bernard Cornwell

189. “I liked those tales. They were better than my stepmother’s stories of Cuthbert’s miracles. Christians, it seemed to me, were forever weeping and I did not think Woden’s worshippers cried much.”

— Bernard Cornwell

190. “The standing to be cannonaded,’ he wrote in the memoirs of his military service: and having nothing else to do, is about the most unpleasant thing that can happen to soldiers in an engagement.”

— Bernard Cornwell

191. “The wheel of fortune that had once raised her so high had taken her into the utter depths.”

— Bernard Cornwell

192. “The Holy Grail, the most precious of all Christ’s bequests to man, lost these thousand years and more, and he could see it glowing in the sky like shining blood and about it, bright as the glittering crown of a saint, rays of dazzling shimmer filled the heaven. Thomas.”

— Bernard Cornwell

193. “I’m fortunate that the books sell, but even more fortunate to live in Chatham, to be very happily married and to have, on the whole, a fairly clear conscience.”

— Bernard Cornwell

194. “Yet a little country in a big land has a small future. I knew that. To our north was Constantine’s Alba, which we called Scotland, and Constantine feared the Saxons to our south. The Saxons and the Scots were both Christians, and Christians tell us that their god is love, and we must love one another and turn the other cheek, but when land is at stake those beliefs fly away and swords are drawn.”

— Bernard Cornwell

195. “Because I’m tired of Wessex,” I said, “tired of priests, tired of being told what your god’s will is, tired of being told that I’m a sinner, tired of your endless damned nonsense, tired of that nailed tyrant you call god who only wants us to be miserable. And I refused to give the oath because my ambition is to go back north, to Bebbanburg, and to kill the men who hold it, and I cannot do that if I am sworn to Edward and he wants something different of me.”

— Bernard Cornwell

196. “I was still screaming at the enemy, promising them death. I was Thor, I was Odin, I was the lord of battle.”

— Bernard Cornwell

197. “Anything that comes from the north is bad news.”

— Bernard Cornwell

198. “It is hard to force obedience,” he said, “without encouraging resentment.”

— Bernard Cornwell

199. “There are times,” Leofric grumbled, “when you are an earsling.” An earsling was something that had dropped out of a creature’s backside and was one of Leofric’s favourite insults. We were friends.”

— Bernard Cornwell

200. “In madness lies change, in change is opportunity, and in opportunity are riches.”

— Bernard Cornwell