Top 500 Joe Abercrombie Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “The wise wait for their moment, but never let it pass.”

— Joe Abercrombie

52. “Empathy? What’s that?” Glokta winced as he rubbed at his aching leg. “It’s a sad fact, but pain only makes you sorry for yourself.”

— Joe Abercrombie

53. “The older you get, the more swiftly the years pass. It’s easy to forget how quickly people die.”

— Joe Abercrombie

54. “Comes to be everything reminds you of something past. Somewhere past. Someone. Yourself, maybe, how you were. The now gets fainter and the past more and more real. The future worn down to but a stub.”

— Joe Abercrombie

55. “If a man seeks to change the world, he should first understand it.”

— Joe Abercrombie

56. “What is the world coming to when an honest man cannot burn corpses without suspicion?” asked Notning.”

— Joe Abercrombie

57. “You have to have fear to have courage.”

— Joe Abercrombie

58. “People would far rather believe a lurid lie than a sorry string of accidents. Would far rather believe the world is full of evil than full of bad luck, selfishness and stupidity.”

— Joe Abercrombie

59. “But some things have to be done. Better to do ’em, than to live with the fear of ’em.”

— Joe Abercrombie

60. “Government is tyranny. At its best it is dressed in pretty colours.”

— Joe Abercrombie

61. “That’s the trouble with running. Wherever you run to, that’s where you are.”

— Joe Abercrombie

62. “The wise speaker first learns when to stay silent.”

— Joe Abercrombie

63. “Gold and silver is everything to everyone. Some of us have enough of it to pretend otherwise.”

— Joe Abercrombie

64. “Nobility is shown not by the respect one is given by the highest, but the respect one gives to the lowly.”

— Joe Abercrombie

65. “Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he’s a lover.”

— Joe Abercrombie

66. “There were too many bad men in the North and Caul Shivers, by most accounts, was one of the very worst. Bad men are a terrible curse, no doubt, right up until you’re in bad trouble and there’s one on your side. Then they’re the best thing ever.”

— Joe Abercrombie

67. “You, that judge men by the handle and the sheath, how can I make you know a good blade?’ Jedediah.”

— Joe Abercrombie

68. “The blade itself incites to deeds of violence’ Homer.”

— Joe Abercrombie

69. “The Great Leveller,′ Dogman whispered to himself, since he was in a thoughtful frame of mind. That’s what the hillmen call him. Death, that is. He levels all differences. Named Men and nobodies, south or north. He catches everyone in the end, and he treats each man the same.”

— Joe Abercrombie

70. “The best steel doesn’t always shine the brightest.”

— Joe Abercrombie

71. “Trust. It was a word that only liars used. A word the truthful had no need of.”

— Joe Abercrombie

72. “Every man has his excuses, and the more vile the man becomes, the more touching the story has to be. What is my story now, I wonder?”

— Joe Abercrombie

73. “The goal of government, you see,” and the Arch Lector prodded at the air with his bony forefinger, “is to load the unhappiness onto those least able to make you suffer for it.”

— Joe Abercrombie

74. “Great men have great faults.”

— Joe Abercrombie

75. “You can’t change the fact the world’s full of arseholes. You can only change how you deal with them.”

— Joe Abercrombie

76. “The only difference between war and murder is the number of dead.”

— Joe Abercrombie

77. “Everything beautiful has a dark side, and some of us must dwell there, so that others can laugh in the light.”

— Joe Abercrombie

78. “You don’t pick your family, you take what you’re given and you make the best of it.”

— Joe Abercrombie

79. “Danger and opportunity often walk hand in hand.”

— Joe Abercrombie

80. “Hard words are for fools and cowards.”

— Joe Abercrombie

81. “I would be the last to disagree, but you fail to see that you are worse. No man capable of greater evil than the one who thinks himself in the right. No purpose more evil than the higher purpose. I freely admit I am a villain. That’s why you hired me. But I am no hypocrite.”

— Joe Abercrombie

82. “Every hero is someone’s villain.”

— Joe Abercrombie

83. “Those with bad luck should at least attempt to balance it with good sense.”

— Joe Abercrombie

84. “Enough pain makes a coward of anyone.”

— Joe Abercrombie

85. “More often than not bad luck meant bad plans.”

— Joe Abercrombie

86. “But the risk of making any choice is always that you might make the wrong one. We must make our choices nonetheless. Fear of being a grown-up is a poor reason to remain a child.”

— Joe Abercrombie

87. “Truly clever things are said with short words. Long ones are used to hide stupidity.”

— Joe Abercrombie

88. “Why do I do it, when it always hurts me? Why must we test the pain? Tongue the ulcer, rub the blister, pick the scab?”

— Joe Abercrombie

89. “That’s the one. I’m an optimist.’ ‘How’s it working out for you?’ ‘Not great, but I keep hoping.’ ‘That’s optimists. You bastards never learn.”

— Joe Abercrombie

90. “Nostalgia was becoming a favoured hobby of his. Strange, how the best moments of our lives we scarcely notice except in looking back.”

— Joe Abercrombie

91. “My father used to say the seeds of the past bear fruit in the present.”

— Joe Abercrombie

92. “Perhaps we’ll have some answers, at least, before the end. I always dreamed of dying well-informed.”

— Joe Abercrombie

93. “Cleverness is no guarantee of sensible behaviour.”

— Joe Abercrombie

94. “Suffering is what gives a man strength, my boy, just as the steel most hammered turns out the hardest.”

— Joe Abercrombie

95. “In my experience, a friend is merely an acquaintance who has yet to betray you.”

— Joe Abercrombie

96. “Let Father Peace spill tears over the methods. Mother War smiles upon results.”

— Joe Abercrombie

97. “When you tell a lie, you have to sound like you believe it. Goes double for the ones you tell yourself.”

— Joe Abercrombie

98. “It’s a fool who makes folk choose too often between loyalty and good sense.”

— Joe Abercrombie

99. “I span the entire geek spectrum.”

— Joe Abercrombie

100. “One should learn the lessons of history. The mistakes of the past need only be made once.”

— Joe Abercrombie