Top 120 David Eddings Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 3 of 3

101. “We call this a “bow”, Cap’n, and the thing that’s sticking out of that fellow’s head over on the other side of the trench is called an “arrow”. If you put them together just right, they’ll do all sorts of nice things to people who aren’t nice.”

— David Eddings

102. “He felt oddly powerless, as if his entire life were in the fingers of two faceless players maneuvering pieces in the same patterns on some vast board in a game that, for all he knew, had lasted for eternity.”

— David Eddings

103. “It’s common knowledge that the “church” is nothing more than an invention of the priesthood designed to swindle the ordinary people of the empire out of just about everything they own.”

— David Eddings

104. “As long as people are talking instead of fighting, nobody loses very much blood – unless he happens to bite his tongue.”

— David Eddings

105. “He’s nearly a man,” Faldor explained to Aunt Pol, “and a man always has need of a good knife.”

— David Eddings

106. “Centuries pass when nothing happens, and then in a few short years events of such tremendous importance take place that the world is never the same again.”

— David Eddings

107. “His outburst that morning had been directed almost more at himself than at Aunt Pol. He had called her a monster, but it was the monster within himself he hated. The dreadful catalogue of what she had suffered over uncounted years for him and the passion with which she had spoken – evidence of the pain his words had caused her – twisted searingly in his mind. He was ashamed, so ashamed that he could not even bear to look into the faces of his friends.”

— David Eddings

108. “Any time there’s something so ridiculously dangerous that no rational human being would try it, they send for me.′ – Garion.”

— David Eddings

109. “Being afraid was not the sort of thing that endangered life or limb, but it was still an injury of sorts – and sometimes a deeper and more serious kind of injury.”

— David Eddings

110. “Because they were both young, she was intolerant and he was stubborn.”

— David Eddings

111. “Bheid and Leitha, but he didn’t say anything.”

— David Eddings

112. “Your – ah – intervention, shall we say, has simplified things in the palace enormously. We no longer have to worry about Salmissra’s whims and peculiar appetites. We rule by committee, and we hardly ever find it necessary to poison each other anymore. No one’s tried to poison me for months.”

— David Eddings

113. “Raphael watched, and gradually he began to understand them. At first it was not even a theory, but rather a kind of intuition. He found that he could look at any one of them and almost smell the impending crisis. That was the key word – crisis. At first it seemed too dramatic a term to apply to situations resulting from their bumbling mismanagement of their lives or deliberate wrongheaded stupidity, but they themselves reacted as if these situations were in fact crises.”

— David Eddings

114. “The men sit around getting fat and arguing with each other about something they call “philosophy” – most of which is pure nonsense.”

— David Eddings

115. “He had performed that last service that a man can perform for a friend – he had told the truth about him.”

— David Eddings

116. “You’d think that the people who worshiped the real true God would have better sense.”

— David Eddings

117. “Lammer stared at the chunk of bread in his hands, trembling violently. “I’ll follow you, my lady,” he declared in a quavering voice. “I’ve eaten my shoes and lived on boiled grass and tree roots.” His fists closed about the chunk of bread as if he were afraid someone might take it away from him. “I’ll follow you to the end of the world and back for this.” And he began to eat, tearing at the bread with his teeth.”

— David Eddings

118. “You’ve been away from home too long if you can get lost on the way from the harbor to the palace.”

— David Eddings

119. “Mad with terror, many even leaped into the deadly water of the river. ‘We’re not going to be able to get through that mob, Polgara,’ Barak said.”

— David Eddings

120. “It’s the way of kings.”

— David Eddings

121. “I’ve seen hopeless wars won before. If you give in to despair before you begin, you’ll have no chance at all.”

— David Eddings

122. “In spite of this universal plunge toward matrimony, I still haven’t lost my senses. If worse comes to worse, I still know how to run.”

— David Eddings

123. “Why not hold an election?’ I asked them. ‘I’ve never had that much faith in elections,’ Ran Horb said dubiously. ‘An election’s nothing more than a popularity contest, and popularity’s hardly a measure of any kind of administrative ability.”

— David Eddings

124. “Some stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Other stories never end, maybe because they’re alive.”

— David Eddings

125. “I thought the trees down in Lady Zelana’s country were about as big as a tree could get,” he said, “but the ones around here are so tall that they probably tickle the moon’s tummy when she goes by.”

— David Eddings

126. “Kroldor’s men are going to blame him for the way things turned out,’ Hettar observed. ‘I know. But then, that’s one of the hazards of leadership.”

— David Eddings

127. “Now there’s something for you to think about. If you don’t know that you can’t do something, isn’t there a remote possibility that you’ll go ahead and do it anyway in absolute defiance of physical law? That might be one of the drawbacks of education. If you don’t know that you can’t pick yourself up by the scruff of the neck and hold yourself at arm’s length, maybe you can.”

— David Eddings

128. “No matter how professional soldiers might be, an avoided battle was always good news.”

— David Eddings

129. “It’s all very well to put the government in the hands of the perfect man, but what do you do when the perfect man gets a belly-ache?’ That’s the major argument against any kind of absolutism.”

— David Eddings

130. “A prudent man doesn’t give either a priest or a woman the opportunity to scold him in public.”

— David Eddings

131. “Don’t explain it to me, please,” Anheg said. “As long as somebody I know and trust understands, that’s all that’s really important.”

— David Eddings

132. “What you have to decide is whether you should do something, not whether you can do it.”

— David Eddings