Top 500 Pierce Brown Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 4 of 10

151. “Wear the mask. Hide the man. Feel nothing. See everything. Move and kill. Move and kill. I am not a man. They are not men.”

— Pierce Brown

152. “I admire one to my left, the bronze sun is behind him as he falls, silhouetting him, immortalizing him in that singular moment – one I know I shall never forget – so that he looks like a Miltonian angel falling with wrath and glory.”

— Pierce Brown

153. “Imagine there was a table covered with fleas,” he explains. “The fleas would jump and jump to heights unknown. Then a man came along and upturned a glass jar over the fleas. The fleas jumped and hit the top of the jar and could go no farther. Then the man removed the jar and yet the fleas did not jump higher than they had grown accustomed, because they believed there to still be a glass ceiling.”

— Pierce Brown

154. “I am not alone. I am not his victim. So let him do his worst. I am the Reaper. I know how to suffer. I know the darkness.”

— Pierce Brown

155. “Love is the stars, and its light carries on long after death.”

— Pierce Brown

156. “Silenius walked his stiletto. I’ve no doubt we’ll walk ours.” “What makes you so confident?” “Well, for starters, we have smaller feet.”

— Pierce Brown

157. “But I remember when the Gamma Helldiver, Dago, took a deep pull from his burner, turning it bright but dead in a few quick moments. He said, This is you.”

— Pierce Brown

158. “I hate how my body shivers at the idea of glory. There’s something deep in man that hungers for this. But I think it weakness, not strength, to abandon decency for that strange darker spirit.”

— Pierce Brown

159. “Nothing has ever been enough for you, nor will it be. You’re trying to matter to yourself. Because you’re broken inside. Because you hate what you are.”

— Pierce Brown

160. “They took Mustang,” I tell my pack. They look on silently. The Jackal no longer matters. “So now we take Olympus.” The smiles they give one another are as chilling as the snow. Sevro cackles.”

— Pierce Brown

161. “They knew I was something dangerous, something different. Sooner or later, they had to know I would snap and come to cut them down. Or perhaps they think I’m still a child. The fools. Alexander was a child when he ruined his first nation. We.”

— Pierce Brown

162. “Don’t be so dramatic. Ass sweat never killed a soul.”

— Pierce Brown

163. “For instance, if a fish has 3,453 scales on its left side and 3,453 on its right side, which side of the fish has the most scales? The outside. They call it extrapolational thinking.”

— Pierce Brown

164. “A man is never too young to kill, never too wise, never too strong, but he can damn well be too rich.”

— Pierce Brown

165. “As a human, I am entitled only to death.”

— Pierce Brown

166. “No animal but man throws themselves willingly into the flames, Copper. Relish the sight. You’ll not see it again.”

— Pierce Brown

167. “Look into yourself, Darrow, and you’ll realize that you are a good man who will have to do bad things.”

— Pierce Brown

168. “He is like any other petty tyrant of history. A slave to his own whims. A master of nothing but selfishness.”

— Pierce Brown

169. “We chosen few are the fire of our people.” I beat my chest. “We are not Red, not Blue or Gold or Gray or Obsidian. We are humanity. We are the tide. And.”

— Pierce Brown

170. “Once, the worlds called Cassius the Morning Knight, protector of the Society, slayer of Ares. Then he murdered his Sovereign, my grandmother, and let the Rising tear down the very Society he swore to protect. He let Darrow destroy my world and bring chaos to the Society. I can never forgive him for that, but neither can I repay the debt I owe him. He kept Sevro au Barca from killing me.”

— Pierce Brown

171. “Hyrg la, Ragnar!”

— Pierce Brown

172. “All men are not created equal,” he declares. Tall, imperious, an eagle of a man. “The weak have deceived you. They would say the meek should inherit the Earth. That the strong should nurture the gentle. This is the Noble Lie of Demokracy. The cancer that poisoned mankind.”

— Pierce Brown

173. “You cannot stop this. The reason I tell you all this is to disabuse you of that delusion of grandeur. You are small, as am I. But you can be a part of something, Mr. Horn. A part of the solution to this dark age.”

— Pierce Brown

174. “She left me to give me anger, and I cannot help but hate her for a moment even though beyond that moment there is only love.”

— Pierce Brown

175. “I know death well enough to hear it gather its breath.”

— Pierce Brown

176. “That’s what Society does – spread the blame so there is no villain, so it’s futile to even begin to find a villain, to find justice. It’s just machinery. Processes.”

— Pierce Brown

177. “I suppose that is what every man must tell himself in war.” His voice rasps and he sucks again on the water tube. “That there will be an end, and when it is done, enough of himself will remain. Enough to be a father. A brother. A lover. But we know it isn’t true. Don’t we, Darrow? War eats the victors last.”

— Pierce Brown

178. “Mother bid me to tell you: a pauper can never be a prince. Every time you look in the mirror, remember what we did to you. Remember you breathe because we let you. Remember your heart will one day be on our table. Rise so high, in mud you lie.”

— Pierce Brown

179. “Pride is just a shout into the wind.”

— Pierce Brown

180. “There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extrovert.”

— Pierce Brown

181. “Suffering isn’t real to them. War isn’t real. It’s just a three-letter word for other people that they see in the digital newsfeeds. Just a stream of uncomfortable images they skip past. A whole business of weapons and arms and ships and hierarchies they don’t even notice, all to shield these fools from the true agony of what it means to be human.”

— Pierce Brown

182. “Thank you, Matteo,” I say, tears in my eyes. I pick him up and hug him despite his protests. “If I live more than a week, I’ll have you to thank, my goodman.” He blushes when I set him down. “Manage your temper,” he reminds me, his small voice darkening. “Manners, manners, then burn their bloodydamn house to the ground.”

— Pierce Brown

183. “The Gold spits. “You send a dog to do your fighting?” “I am a man!” Ragnar roars louder than the screaming engines of a passing ship.”

— Pierce Brown

184. “Amazing the power you have when you’re bloody up to the sleeves and none of it is your own.”

— Pierce Brown

185. “There’s nothing like a mother’s fear.”

— Pierce Brown

186. “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun Nor the furious winter’s rages, Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages; Golden lads and girls all must As chimney sweepers come to dust “Per aspera, ad astra,” my Golden friends whisper, even Sevro. And with a press of a button, Roque disappears from our lives to begin his last journey to join Ragnar and generations of fallen warriors in the sun.”

— Pierce Brown

187. “She will not come back, but her beauty, her voice, will echo until the end of time. She believed in something beyond herself, and her death gave her voice power it didn’t have in life.”

— Pierce Brown

188. “For seven hundred years, my people have been enslaved without voice, without hope. Now I am their sword. And I do not forgive. I do not forget. So let him lead me onto his shuttle. Let him think he owns me. Let him welcome me into his house, so I might burn it down.”

— Pierce Brown

189. “I no longer trust stillness. Stillness is the enemy taking careful aim.”

— Pierce Brown

190. “Perhaps one day I’ll have two hearts to give.”

— Pierce Brown

191. “And when you hang from the gallows. When the door beneath you opens, when your feet do the Devil’s Dance, then you will realize in that moment that this has all been for nothing, because there will be no one left to pull your feet.”

— Pierce Brown

192. “Seeing the joy in my wife’s face, I am witnessing another miracle. One, for a long time, I believed I would never see again. Love so potent, so whole and true, that it hurts, because even when you convince yourself that it will last forever, you know enough of the world to see how things break and fade, but somehow, some way, you believe this love will be the exception. That it alone will last.”

— Pierce Brown

193. “This hurts so much. Eo. I miss her. I miss home. What was her second gift? I never found out. Her sister never told me.”

— Pierce Brown

194. “Always negotiate with food.”

— Pierce Brown

195. “We are the new age. The new world. And if we’re to show the way, then we better damn well make it a better one. I am Sevro au Barca. And I am no longer afraid.”

— Pierce Brown

196. “Some men have threads of life so strong that they fray and snap those around them.”

— Pierce Brown

197. “They want a leader, and if the Reaper of Mars decides to come back from the dead here... you won’t have an army, you’ll have a tide at your heels.”

— Pierce Brown

198. “If the need arises I’ve got myself a psychotic Goblin-sized fighter jet.”

— Pierce Brown

199. “Well, I do believe I am the lightning,” Cassius declares. “And you, my brooding friend, are the thunder.”

— Pierce Brown

200. “You’re making me emotional, and I hate it.”

— Pierce Brown