Blood Oath Quotes

...if the United States never intended to help, it shouldn't have built up the expectation. The false promise of help was cruel and inexcusable and it would only get worse over time. If a man is drowning and a boat drives past in the distance, the man accepts his death and goes down quietly. If a man is drowning and a boat pulls up beside him, dangles a life jacket, tells the world he wants to help, but then doesn't throw the life jacket, the drowning man dies crying and his family might take a blood oath to take revenge on the boat's crew. This type of anger was already starting to build in Syria and al-Qaeda would capitalize on it. ~ Richard Engel

She'd never let them break her. Never swear that blood oath.
For Terrasen, for her people, whom she had left to endure their own torment for ten long years. She owed them this much. ~ Sarah J. Maas

I make this bond to you in blood, not flowers," he said. "Come with me and you shall be an empress with the moon for your throne and constellations to wear in your hair. Come with me and I promise you that we will always be equals."
My mouth went dry. A blood oath was no trifling undertaking. Vassals swore it to lords, priests to the gods. But husbands to wives? Unthinkable.
Still, Bharata's court had taught me one thing: the greater the offer, the greater the compromise. And I had neither dowry nor influence from Bharata, nothing to give but the jewels I wore.
"You're offering me the world, and you ask for nothing in return."
"I ask only for your trust and patience."
"Trust?" I repeated. "Trust is won in years. Not words. And I don't know anything about you--"
"I will tell you everything," he cut in, his voice fierce. "But we must wait until the new moon. The kingdom's close ties to the Otherworld make it dangerous grounds for the curious."
In my stories to Gauri, the new moon weakened the other realms. Starlight thinned their borders and the inhabitants lay glutted and sleepy on moonbeams. The thing is, I had always made that part up.
"Why that long?"
"Because that is when my realm is at its weakest," said Amar, confirming my imagination and sending shivers across my arms. "Until then, the hold of the other realms binds me into silence."
The night before the wedding ceremony, there was no moon in the sky. I would have to wa ~ Roshani Chokshi

And don't get me started on your manwhoring," Tucker grumbles. "You've always been a player, but dude, you've hooked up with five chicks this week."

"So?"

"So it's Thursday. Five girls in four days. Do the fucking math, John."

Oh shit. He first-named me. Tucker only calls me John when I've really pissed him off.

Except now he's pissed me off, so I first-name him right back. "What's wrong with that, John?"

Yup, we're both John. I guess we should take a blood oath and form a club or something. ~ Elle Kennedy

Morelli beeped his truck unlocked. "If you're looking for your rent-a-cop, I told Ranger you'd be with me this morning."
"Did he make you take a blood oath that you'd protect me?"
"He asked me if I had adequate health insurance. ~ Janet Evanovich

Even if we both survive, I won't enforce my claim on you," I said desperately. "In fact, the first thing I'll do is drop you back at that bordello in Poland and order you a new carnival orgy, promise!" Then I threw up, spraying a stream of crimson all over him as I lost my fight against the nausea.

"See?" I managed when I finished puking. Vow sealed with a blood oath."

He looked down at himself in disgust. "This is everything I knew marriage would be. ~ Jeaniene Frost

Her heart - it had been meant for her heart.
And he had taken that arrow for her.
The killing calm spread through her like hoarfrost. She'd kill them all. Slowly.
They reached the second bridge just as Aedion's barrage of arrows halted, his quiver no doubt emptied. She shoved Rowan onto the planks. "Run," she said.
"No - ".
"Run."
It was a voice that she'd never heard herself use - a queen's voice - that came out, along with the blind yank she made on the blood oath that bound them together.
His eyes flashed with fury, but his body moved as though she'd compelled him. He staggered across the bridge, just as
Aelin whirled, drawing Goldryn and ducking just as the Wing Leader's sword swiped for her head. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Do Story Weavers sign a contract or make a blood oath to be difficult and stubborn and a pain in the ass? ~ Maria V. Snyder

Even with his eyes concealed, I sensed Amar's gaze. "What world do you belong to? Theirs?" I pointed at an Otherworldly being sharpening his horns.
"No. My kingdom is neither among humans nor Otherworldly beings. It is between."
"Why did you come to Bharata?" I asked. "The invitation to my swayamvara was issued only to the nations we're at war with."
"Everyone is at war with my nation," he said with a smile.
"How did you even know about me?"
"Akaran has its eyes and ears."
He could have been lying. Nothing escaped me from the rafters where I had spied for years. But my father had other meetings…and he was not always in Bharata.
I hesitated. "How can I trust someone who won't even reveal their face?"
"It's far too easy to be recognized here."
He drew the cloak closer and the gesture was so final, so closed off and unwelcoming, that I stepped back, chastened. Amar removed the wedding garland from around his neck. From the sleeves of his jacket, he withdrew a small knife. Before I could react, he swiped the knife across his palm. Small beads of blood welled to the surface. He held his palm out to me like a perverse offering.
"I make this bond to you in blood, not flowers," he said. "Come with me and you shall be an empress with the moon for your throne and constellations to wear in your hair. Come with me and I promise you that we will always be equals."
My mouth went dry. A blood oath was no trifling undertaking. Vassals sw ~ Roshani Chokshi

There existed something in this world that bound a mage tighter than a blood oath: love. Love was the ultimate chain, the ultimate whip, and the ultimate slave driver. ~ Sherry Thomas

Aedion went rigid. "And what about our unquestioning loyalty? What have you done to earn that? What have you done to save our people since you've returned? Were you ever going to tell me about the blood oath, or was that just another of your many lies?"
Aelin snarled with an animalistic intensity that reminded him she, too, had Fae blood in her veins. "Go have your temper tantrum somewhere else. Don't come back until you can act like a human being. Or half of one, at least."
Aedion swore at her, a filthy, foul curse that he immediately regretted. Rowan lunged for him, knocking back his chair hard enough to flip it over, but Aelin threw out her hand. The prince stood down.
That easily, she leashed the mighty, immortal warrior. ~ Sarah J. Maas

God, but the coast here was painfully beautiful, the dark lush greens of the fir trees piercing his brain, the half-raging sky and sea, the surge of salt water against the rocks twinned to the urgent wash of blood through his arteries as he waited for her to kill him or hear him out. Seditious thoughts: there would be nothing too terrible about dying out here, about becoming part of all of this. ~ Jeff VanderMeer

The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men. ~ Samuel Adams

Other examples of human-sourced pharmaceuticals surely causing more distress than they relieved include strips of cadaver skin tied around the calves to prevent cramping, "old liquified placenta" to "quieten a patient whose hair stands up without cause" (I'm quoting Li Shih-chen on this one and the next), "clear liquid feces" for worms ("the smell will induce insects to crawl out of any of the body orifices and relieve irritation"), fresh blood injected into the face for eczema ~ Mary Roach

Death Vision

I think it's a multiplication of sight,
Like after a low hovering autumn rain
When the invisible web of funnel weaves
And sheetweb weavers all at once are seen
Where they always were, spread and looping
The grasses, every strand, waft and leaf-
Crest elucidated with water-light and frost,
completing the fullest aspect of field.

Or maybe the grace of death is split-second
Transformation of knowledge, an intricate,
Turning realization, as when a single
Sperm-embracing deep ovum transforms,
In an instant, from stasis to replicating,
Star-shifting shimmer, rolls, reaches,
Alters its plane of intentions, becomes
A hoofing, thumping host of purpose.


I can imagine not merely
The falling away of blank walls
And blinds in that moment, not merely
A shutter flung open for the first time
Above a valley of interlocking forests
And constellations but a sweeping,
Penetrating circumference of vision
Encompassing both knotweed bud
And its seed simultaneously, seeing
Blood bone and its ash as one,
The repeated light and fall and flight
Of hawk-owl and tundra vole
As a union of origin and finality.

A mathematics of flesh and space might
Take hold if we ask for it in that last
Moment, might appear as if it had always
Existed within the eyes, translucent,
Jewel-like in stained gla ~ Pattiann Rogers

[Every age], however destitute of science or virtue, sufficiently abounds with acts of blood and military renown. ~ Edward Gibbon

I don't know how it happened. Through the din of the crowd, I heard this tiny scream. As small and distant as it was, it was like thunder in my head.' He looked up at me. Some of the blood had drained from his face making the dark circles under his eyes more pronounced. 'I knew it was you. I don't know how or why, but I knew it was you. ~ Tess Oliver

A skittish motorbike with a touch of blood in it is better than all the riding animals on earth, because of its logical extension of our faculties, and the hint, the provocation, to excess conferred by its honeyed untiring smoothness. ~ T.E. Lawrence

Now you can start paying for it with money instead of blood. ~ Kenneth Eade

The sight of a coward's blood can never make a warrior tremble. ~ James F. Cooper

Boy, there are people who conquered half the world, slaughtered whole populations, wiped cultures off the face of the planet, and you know what history calls them? Heroes! Kings, presidents, champions, explorers. You think America was settled by white men because the Indians invited us her? No, we took this land because we were stronger, and that's how every page of human history is written. It's just our nature. We're a predator species, top of the food chain. Survival of the fittest is written in our blood, it's stenciled on every gene of our DNA. The strong take and the strong make, and the weak are there only to help them do it. End of story. ~ Jonathan Maberry

Prayer is as necessary as the air, as the blood in our bodies, as anything to keep us alive-to keep us alive to the grace of God. ~ Mother Teresa

The war could kill the faith in him, too, if he was not strong or careful enough. He could feel it fluttering within him sometimes, a bird in a cage of knives. Its own blood on its face and wings. ~ Brian Francis Slattery

Let us go somewhere and talk," Kopano said to Kaidan.
"We can talk here. She never uses her senses."
Whoops. I was officially eavesdropping, but I didn't feel guilty. I was too desperate for insight into Kaidan's mind. They spoke in low tones, hard to hear with the rush of rainwater.
"Do not be upset, Kai. I feel only concern for her."
"I'll bet you do."
Kaidan's clipped, harsh response was in direct contrast to Kopano's tranquil words.
"Even you are willing to risk yourself for her, brother."
"That's because I actually know her. What's your reason? I suppose you'd like to get to know her, too?"
"You have made it very clear that she is not available in that way. Be reasonable. There is plainly more at stake here. I only wished to help."
"There's nothing you can do, Kope!"
They got quiet and I could hear Kaidan's ragged breaths through his nose.
"Please trust me, brother," Kopano said. "There is no stronger weapon for Pharzuph to use than your concern for each other. If he learns that you were here to console her, you will lose all leverage with him. Do not fool yourself into thinking he will not discard you."
"Yes, some of us have to worry about such things. Thank you for the reminder."
The sounds that came next iced my blood: heavy footfalls crashing into puddles, and the metallic zing of a switchblade. I stood up with a hand to my heart. Then there was a deep, gruff chuckle. My father's.
"Put it away, boy ~ Wendy Higgins

I live close to Hampstead Heath, so when I do have spare time, I like to raise my white blood cell count with a swim in the men's pond. It's an ambition of mine to swim in the ponds on every day of the year. ~ Bertie Carvel

What we discovered, counter-intuitively, is that when you start killing a cancer cell, one of the things it does in order to survive is to spread even further. It causes itself to form new blood vessels. We've termed this 'reactionary angiogenesis.' ~ Patrick Soon-Shiong

I have high blood sugars, and Type 2 diabetes is not going to kill me. But I just have to eat right, and exercise, and lose weight, and watch what I eat, and I will be fine for the rest of my life. ~ Tom Hanks

I am not moved to love Thee, 0 my Lord,
By any longing for Thy Promised Land;
Nor by the fear of hell am I unmanned
To cease from my transgressing deed or word.
Tis Thou Thyself dost move me, - Thy blood poured
Upon the cross from nailed foot and hand;
And all the wounds that did Thy body brand;
And all Thy shame and bitter death's award.

Yea, to Thy heart am I so deeply stirred
That I would love Thee were no heaven on high, -
That I would fear, were hell a tale absurd!
Such my desire, all questioning grows vain;
Though hope deny me hope I still should sigh,
And as ray love is now, it should remain.

(To Christ Crucified) ~ Thomas Walsh

The problem was that, from the very beginning, Christian values were always more popular in American culture than the Christian gospel. That's why one could speak of "God and country" with great reception in almost any era of the nation's history but would create cultural distance as soon as one mentioned "Christ and him crucified." God was always welcome in American culture. He was, after all, the Deity whose job it was to bless America. The God who must be approached through the mediation of the blood of Christ, however, was much more difficult to set to patriotic music or to "Amen" in a prayer at the Rotary Club. ~ Russell D. Moore

That's what Georgie did to him. She pulled the blood to the surface of his skin. She acted on him. Tidally. She made him feel like things were happening. Like life was happening - and even if he was miserable sometimes, he wasn't going to sleep through it. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Each killing steals a bit of humanity until a murderer is nothing more than an animal. A hunger replaces the spirit. A want for what was lost, but as with innocence, the soul can never be replaced. Joy, love, and peace flee such a vessel and in their stead blooms a desire for blood and death. ~ Michael J. Sullivan

Do what? Kill me? Then my blood would be on your hands - more than it already is - as well as that of your four dear friends. Because you, frater, are responsible for all this. You know it. You made me what I am." "I made you nothing." "Well said! Well said!" A dry, almost desiccated laugh came over the tiny speaker. Listening, ~ Douglas Preston

As everyone who has read the Marxists critically has not failed to see ... the gospel of St. Marx is just the old Judaeo-Christian mythology with the supernatural sanctions left out, thus making the cult the most implausible and unreasonable of all the Christian heresies. It is true that there is reciprocal hostility between Marxists and the other Christian cults, but that is merely normal. Christian sects began persecuting each other even before one of them attained political power in the decaying Roman Empire, and everyone remembers the fearful Wars of Religion that convulsed and almost ruined Europe. The Gospel of Love invariably incites the most savage and blood-thirsty hatreds. ~ Revilo P. Oliver

Depression is like a heaviness that you can't ever escape. It crushes down on you, making even the smallest things like tying your shoes or chewing on toast seem like a twenty-mile hike uphill. Depression is a part of you; it's in your bones and your blood. ~ Jasmine Warga

Galen , in the third section of his book, "The Use of the Limbs," says correctly that it would be in vain to expect to see living beings formed of the blood of menstruous women and the semen virile, who will not die, will never feel pain, or will move perpetually, or shine like the sun. This dictum of Galen is part of the following more general proposition: Whatever is formed of matter receives the most perfect form possible in that species of matter; in each individual case the defects are in accordance with that individual matter. ~ Maimonides

Camilla Figg was already there, crawling across the floor very slowly on all fours on the right side of the room and avoiding the left side altogether. That was a very good idea, because the left side of the room was so spattered with blood that it looked like a large animal had exploded. The blood glistened, still moist, and I felt a twitch of unhappiness that there could be so much of the awful stuff. ~ Jeff Lindsay

The skin is an integral part of the body and depends upon the general system for its supply of food and to carry away its waste. Skin health depends primarily upon the general health of the body. All attempts to deal with the skin as an independent entity, without due regard to its reliance upon the general system, must of necessity result in failure. The skin is nourished by the blood and there is no other source from which it can draw sustenance. "Skin foods" are all frauds. These are composed chiefly of grease. No fat can be assimilated by the skin or other tissues of the body until it has first been broken down into its constituent fatty acids in the process of digestion. Even were this not true, the skin contains very little fat and these "skin foods" would still not constitute proper nourishment for it. Blood is the only skin food. ~ Herbert M. Shelton

With the man in the woman, and the woman in the man. In the blood of Eden lie the woman and the man. ~ Peter Gabriel

Ever see a hot shot hit, kid? I saw the Gimp catch one in Philly. We rigged his room with a one-way whorehouse mirror and charged a sawski to watch it. He never got the needle out of his arm. They don't if the shot is right. That's the way they find them, dropper full of clotted blood hanging out of a blue arm. The look in his eyes when it hit
Kid, it was tasty.
~ William S. Burroughs

When you're born, you're pure. Unspoiled and trusting. Some say, it's the only time we're perfect. You're also born covered in blood and placenta. No one gets nostalgic about that. ~ Christopher Titus

And the ladies dressed in red for my pain and with my pain latched onto my breath, clinging like the fetuses of scorpions in the deepest crook of my neck, the mothers in red who sucked out the last bit of heat that my barely beating heart could give me - I always had to learn on my own the steps you take to drink and eat and breathe, I was never taught to cry and now will never learn to do this, least of all from the great ladies latched onto the lining of my breath with reddish spit and floating veils of blood, my blood, mine alone, which I drew myself and which they drink from now after murdering the king whose body is listing in the river and who moves his eyes and smiles, though he's dead and when you're dead, you're dead, for all the smiling you do, and the great ladies, the tragic ladies in red have murdered the one who is floating down the river and I stay behind like a hostage in their eternal custody.

I want to die to the letter of the law of the commonplace, where we are assured that dying is the same as dreaming. The light, the forbidden wine, the vertigo. Who is it you write for? The ruins of an abandoned temple. If only celebration were possible. A mournful vision, splintered, of a garden of broken statues.

Numb time, time like a glove upon a drum. The three who compete in me remain on a shifting point and we neither are nor is. My eyes used to find rest in humiliated, forsaken things. Nowadays I see with them; I've seen and approved of no ~ Alejandra Pizarnik

To anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them the land they live on is like their mother. It's the only thing that lasts, that's worth working for, for fighting for ... ~ Alexandra Ripley

But the truth, he knows, is otherwise. His pleasure in living has been snuffed out. Like a leaf on a stream, like a puffball on a breeze, he has begun to float towards his end. He sees it quite clearly, and it fills him with (the word will not go away) despair. The blood of life is leaving his body and despair is taking its place, despair that is like a gas, odourless, tasteless, without nourishment. You breathe it in, your limbs relax, you cease to care, even at the moment when the steel touches your throat. ~ J.M. Coetzee

I will say that there is an inordinate amount of medicine in my novels, especially the first one. There are a lot of medical things that happen. A hip fracture, three different kinds of lung cancer, pneumonia, blood poisoning, and so on. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Under the broken promises of superpowers and under the worlds indifference to spilled Arab blood. ~ Susan Abulhawa

The line between actual killing and verbal, symbolic, or imaginary violence is thin and permeable. The threat of violence is a method of forceful coercion, even if no blood is actually shed. ~ John J. Collins

What else? A handful of hard white sugar lumps from the supply for the master's table. Sugar and cake and blood and pork. That's what little boys are made of. ~ Meg Rosoff

The true rain came in a monster wind, and the storm broke in blackness over the hills and the bloody valley; the sky opened along the ridge, and the vast water thundered down, drowning the fires, flooding the red creeks, washing the rocks and the grass and the white bones of the dead, cleansing the earth and soaking it thick and rich with water and wet again with clean cold rainwater, driving the blood deep into the Earth, to grow it again with the roots toward heaven. ~ Michael Shaara

I know real dirt looks nothing like this. Nothing like soft blood flecked with black bone. ~ Catherynne M Valente

We may well lie with what seems to be a woman of flesh and blood, and yet all the time it is only a devil in the shape of a woman. ~ Martin Luther

Put more trust in nobility of character than in an oath. ~ Solon

And Grandma spooned in some beans. "We need one of them psychics," Grandma said. "I saw on television where you can call them up, and they know everything. They find dead people all the time. I saw a couple of them on a talk show, and they were saying how they help the police with these serial murder cases. I was watching that show, and I was thinking that if I was a serial murderer I'd chop the bodies up in little pieces so those psychics wouldn't have such an easy job of it. Or maybe I'd drain all the blood out of the body and collect it in a big bucket. Then I'd bury a chicken, and I'd take the victim's blood and make a trail to the chicken. Then the psychic wouldn't know what to make of it when the police dug up a chicken." Grandma helped herself to the gravy boat and poured gravy over her pot roast. "Do you think that'd work?" Everyone but Grandma paused with forks in midair. ~ Janet Evanovich

Oh no, no, no! Are you going to suck my blood? (Amanda
Do I look like a lawyer to you? (Kyrian) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon