Bernard Cornwell is a British historical novelist and broadcaster, who lives in the United States and is regarded as one of the better known personalities in the world of historical literature. Cornwell grew up in Great Britain and after completing his education, he started his professional life as a teacher but then joined the BBC as a broadcaster. However, his career as a historical novelist really took off when he settled in the United States and wrote the first of the Sharpe Stories in 1981, depicting the Napoleonic Wars from the point of view of a soldier named Richard Sharpe. It remains his most famous work and comprises 24 distinct stories. His other famous works include ‘The Starbuck Chronicles’, ‘The Saxon Stories’, ‘The Warlord Chronicles’, ‘The Grail Quest Continues’ and plenty of other novels. He has also written a well-known non-fiction book titled ‘Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles. There is no doubt that Cornwell is a man of rare gift, intelligence and knowledge and his books have been read far and wide, across several nations. Here are some of the select quotes by Bernard Cornwell.
He tolerated his fellow Englishmen, but the Welsh were cabbage-farting dwarves, the Scots were scabby arse-suckers, and the French were shriveled turds.
Bernard Cornwell
The preachers tell us that pride is a great sin, but the preachers are wrong. Pride makes a man, it drives him, it is the shield wall around his reputation... Men die, they said, but reputation does not die.
Bernard Cornwell
Fate is inexorable.
Bernard Cornwell
Life is simple," I said. "Ale, women, sword, and reputation. Nothing else matters.
All those separate people were a part of my life, strings strung on the frame of Uhtred, and though they were separate they affected one another and together they would make the music of my life.
Doubtless there were insanely frenzied warriors, but there is no evidence that lunatic nudists made regular appearances on the battlefield.
Bernard Cornwell
There is such joy in chaos. Stow all the world's evils behind a door and tell men that they must never, ever, open the door, and it will be opened because there is pure joy in destruction.
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?
Robin Hood’s Lament”?’ Every archer knew that tune.
Bernard Cornwell
It was funny, Richard Sharpe thought, that there were no vultures in England.
Bernard Cornwell
Who do you serve?” Lanferelle asked.
“Sir John Cornerwailled,” Hook said proudly.
Lanferelle was pleased. “Sir John! Ah, there's a man. His mother must have slept with a Frenchman.
We are all lonely and all seek a hand to hold in the darkness. It is not the harp, but the hand that plays it.
Bernard Cornwell
And, in her fury, she slapped the king with a skinned eel.
Bernard Cornwell
Wyrd bi ful ārd. Fate is inexorable. We are given power and we lose it.
Bernard Cornwell
Religion makes strange bedfellows.
Bernard Cornwell
If a man can’t remember the laws,” Ragnar said, “then he’s got too many of them.
Bernard Cornwell
She was as faithful as a morning mist, as hard as a sword-bayonet, and that, he thought, made her a suitable reward for a soldier.
Bernard Cornwell
Shun epic verse.
Bernard Cornwell
It was an unsettling thought, that somehow we were sliding back into the smoky dark and that never again would man make something so perfect as this small building.
Love's madness, swinging from ecstasy to despair in one wild second.
Bernard Cornwell
You're not a Christian, are you?"
"No."
"You should consider it. We may not offer too many earthly delights, but our lives after death are certainly worth having.
Bernard Cornwell
To ask another man’s blessing is simply to avoid taking the responsibility.
Bernard Cornwell
It takes a weak man to prove his strength by striking a woman.
Bernard Cornwell
Obadiah Hakeswill had never been concerned by such enmity. Power did not lie in being liked, but in being feared.
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.
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.
In madness lies change, in change is opportunity, and in opportunity are riches.
Bernard Cornwell
How does a lawyer lie?” “With passion, Mr. Starbuck, and with a self-inflicted belief, albeit temporary, that the facts he is reciting are the very stuff of God’s own truth.
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.
And Eoferwic, I thought, was where my story had all begun. Where my father had died. Where I had become the Lord of Bebbanburg. Where I had met Ragnar and learned of the ancient gods.
We had to fight, because to decline battle was a defeat.
Bernard Cornwell
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.
Lord Derfel, you do insult a man so very easily. What was it to be? My head in a pit dunged by slaves? What a paltry imagination you do have. Mine, I fear, sometimes seems excessive, even to me.
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.
There’s war between the gods, Uhtred, war between the Christian god and our gods, and when there is war in Asgard the gods make us fight for them on earth.
She is a woman, and what women want, they get, and if the world and all it holds must be broken in the getting, then so be it.
Bernard Cornwell
Cnut Longsword had near killed me with his blade Ice-Spite and it was small consolation that Serpent-Breath had sliced his throat in the same heartbeat that his sword had broken a rib and pierced my lung.
