Swordsman Quotes

When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet. ~ Robert Greene

The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot. ~ Mark Twain

You're holding a challenge in a fencing club?"

"Yes. Is there something wrong with that?" He pulled on his black pants and the heavy silk green shirt I loved for him to wear because the material seemed to caress hisskin.

No, it's just kind of an incongruous place to hold something so serious as a challenge, isn't it?"

He finished with his shoes, grabbed another towel, and shook it out for me. I made sure Pal still had his back to me, hurrying out of the pool to clasp the towel around me.

"It is no less incongruous than holding a challenge in a bar."

I smiled. "Yes, but my challenge to you wasn't serious. I hope you'll notice that I'm not freaking out about this at all. I haven't even asked you how good you are with asword."

"I noticed." His mouth burned on mine for a moment, his fire being shared between us as his tongue twined around mine in a fiery - albeit brief - dance. "You are learning to have faith in me as is proper between a mateand her wyvern."

"No, I am learning to ask around. Pal told me earlier today that Dmitri had picked swords and that you were pleased because you were some sort of master swordsman a few centuries ago. You'd better not have forgotten anything."

Pal peeked at me out of the corner of his eye, his grin not too obvious. Drake pinched my bare behind as punishment for my saucy tone. "I never forget. Istvan will drive you when you are ready. The challenge is not f ~ Katie MacAlister

Find anything about the Blade?" Billy let out an explosive sigh and creaked back in his chair, hands folded behind his head.
"Comic book references. Stuff about some swordsman named Bob Anderson. Wesley Snipes pictures."
"Really?" I perked up, edging around his desk to try to get a look at the screen. "Any half-naked ones?" "Joanie!"
I drooped. "I didn't think so. There wasn't nearly enough half-naked Wesley in those movies, anyway. ~ C.E. Murphy

The master swordsman isn't interested in killing people. He only wants to perfect his art. ~ Helen DeWitt

So it was that the war in the air began. Men rode upon the whirlwind that night and slew and fell like archangels. The sky rained heroes upon the astonished earth. Surely the last fights of mankind were the best. What was the heavy pounding of your Homeric swordsmen, what was the creaking charge of chariots, besides this swift rush, this crash, this giddy triumph, this headlong sweep to death? ~ H.G.Wells

Two against thirty two," Niten said. "Good odds."
"I've never fought the Spartoi before," Prometheus admitted. "I only know of them by their reputation - and it's fearsome."
"We have an equal reputation," Niten said.
"Well, you do," the Elder said. "I was never that much of a fighter. And after the fall of the island, I rarely took up weapons again."
"Fighting is a skill you never forget," Niten said, a touch of sadness in his voice. "I fought my first duel when I was thirteen. I've been fighting ever since."
"But you are more than just a swordsman," Prometheus said. "You are an artist, a sculptor and a writer."
"No man is ever just one thing," Niten answered. His shoulder dropped and his short sword appeared in his left hand, water droplets sparkling from the blade. "But first and foremost, I was always a warrior." He jabbed his sword into the fog and stirred it like liquid. ~ Michael Scott

Soon all of this shite-hole will know I am the Greatest Swordsman in the world. You, my friend, will sadly not live to see that day. Such is the fate of stepping-stones. ~ Michael R. Fletcher

I am called a great swordsman because I invented a lethal style; but who is greater, the creator of a killing form - or the master of the classic form?"
"I'm very flattered that you would consider me a master but really - "
"Not a master. The master. ~ Matthew Woodring Stover

[When you meet a swordsman/ meet him with a sword Do not offer a poem to anyone but a poet] ~ Dan Simmons

But it says here,' said Ridcully, 'that you are a finest swordsman,' 'I was outnumbered.' 'How many of them were there?' 'Three million. ~ Terry Pratchett

I am an expert swordsman. And I am skilled in the business of death. I take no pleasure in my skill. Simply, I am good at it. ~ Oliver Bowden

And in the Highlands finding the prize less rewarding than the chase, growing into manhood on a copper crown throne, wrestling with the mundane from plague to famine, building an economy like a swordsman builds muscle, recruiting, training, and for what? To have some preordained emperor trample it beneath his heel on his march to the Gilden Gate. I ~ Mark Lawrence

When the identity is realized, I as swordsman see no opponent confronting me and threatening to strike me. I seem to transform myself into the opponent, and every movement he makes as well as every thought he conceives are felt as if they were my own and I intuitively ... know when and how to strike him. ~ D.T. Suzuki

Musashi, who trained himself, became a master swordsman who was never defeated. ~ Kerr Cuhulain

- Was I a swordsman then? sends Johnny. Or a poet? [Yes There is never one without the other] ~ Dan Simmons

Perhaps it's no coincidence that the word words is an anagram of sword. Well-used words cut through ambiguity and confusion like a sharp sword in the hands of an expert swordsman. ~ Anu Garg

There is this, about being the sparring partner of the best swordsman in Caribastos. I always lost. But if ever I meet the third best swordsman in Caribastos, he's going to be in very deep trouble. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

provoke a challenge from Clovis, the Prince of Blinsk, who was widely known as a master swordsman. And of course, anyone familiar with the history of Dis will know that she got her wish.[5] Why would Shelly deliberately provoke the encounter that was result in her own doom? Perhaps she feared that in her old age, her natural tendencies would overcome her training, or perhaps she had simply decided that she had lived long enough. Either way, far from being proof of Tobalt's failure, Shelly's ~ Robert Kroese

Stevie can learn anything from a book. And when it comes to psychiatry, she's read them all. So she wields guilt like a master swordsman. And Max isn't nearly as much of a psychopath as the social worker said because otherwise, she wouldn't feel any guilt at all. At least that's what I tell myself. All the time. ~ Shelly Laurenston

Have you always been a swordsman?' I asked.
He parried my overhead cut. 'I've been many things. ~ Rick Riordan

She ran and didn't slow until she came to a hallway that terminated in a multipaned window of thick, old-fashioned glass. Her breath rasped in her throat, but the dizziness and nausea eased enough that she stood steadier on her feet. She heard again the gentle ringing of metal sliding against metal. Musty air rose up with the same smell of leather and dust, an acrid undertone beneath. She whipped her head toward the end of the hall. At first she didn't see anything. The light shifted and swirled, and the swordsman materialized from the shadows. Gold and red emblazoned his tunic in a chevron against a cobalt background. The sword was back in its scabbard, strapped across his back. He was tall, with broad shoulders and dark hair, and he looked like Sebastian. Timed to the wind stirring the ivy outside, he vanished through the wall. ~ Carolyn Jewel

Swordsman in the last three hundred years." "Maybe he'll go easy on me," I said. The camper snorted. Luke showed me thrusts ~ Rick Riordan

I was nothing if not Kirito the Black Swordsman. ~ Reki Kawahara

There were a number of people who helped me get there, and the one I always mention is Michael Byrne, the great master swordsman and brilliant stunt double. ~ Ian McDiarmid

All right," Clara said. "We have our swordsman, so let's get moving. Brigan, could you attempt, at least, to make yourself presentable? I know this is a war, but the rest of us are trying to pretend it's a party. ~ Kristin Cashore

It is unwise to assume that just because someone has no manners, he is an inferior swordsman as well. ~ Dorothy Hoobler

Quentin had an obsolete sailing ship that had been raised from the dead. He had psychotically effective swordsman and an enigmatic witch-queen. It wasn't the Fellowship of the Ring, but then again he wasn't trying to save the world from Sauron, he was trying to perform a tax audit on a bunch of hick islanders ... ~ Lev Grossman

But, don't you know, there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him. ~ Mark Twain

Melisande lay in bed in the loft of her cottage in Graebrok Forest north of Odr. Wide awake and blinking in the dark, she listened to the mice above her head. Nearly a moon past, her swordsman had repaired a crack in the eaves before returning to the towers and yards of Merhafr, the great port on the Njorth Sea, where he served as a King's Ranger. His name was Othin, taken from a god of wisdom, trickery and war. What such a one knew of carpentry, well, that was open to question. But he knew other things. Nice things. ~ F.T. McKinstry

The world's best swordsman doesn't fear the second best; he fears the worst swordsman, because he can't predict what the idiot will do. ~ David Weber

tegeus-Cromis, sometime soldier and sophisticate, who now dwelt quite alone in a tower by the sea and imagined himself a better poet than swordsman. ~ M. John Harrison

Scars on the back are a swordsman's shame. ~ Zoro

For nine more nights they trained, after an arduous day's march, Vaelin would try to turn a poet into a swordsman. ~ Anthony Ryan

Our heroes are simple: they are brave, they tell the truth, they are good swordsmen and they are never in the long run really defeated. That is why no later books satisfy us like those which were read to us in childhood-for those promised a world of great simplicity of which we knew the rules, but the later books are complicated and contradictory with experience; they are formed out of our own disappointing memories. ~ Graham Greene

No matter how much I might dislike it, Kirito the Black Swordsman was a part of me, had helped shape who I was now, and was giving me strength. ~ Reki Kawahara

I know nothing about how to win over others. I know only the way know the way to win over myself.
attributed to the (master) swordsman Yagyu, who was a teacher (and samurai?) to the Shogun himself. ~ Tsunetomo Yamamoto

I let the insults go by. A good swordsman doesn't pay attention to words in a fight. ~ Ellen Kushner

You would do well to know, Marcus, that irritating a better swordsman than yourself is a good way to end up dead. ~ Raymond E. Feist

Egyptians undergo an odd personality change behind the wheel of a car. In every other setting, aggression and impatience are frowned upon. The unofficial Egyptian anthem "Bokra, Insha'allah, Malesh" (Tomorrow, God Willing, Never Mind) isn't just an excuse for laziness. In a society requiring millennial patience, it is also a social code dictating that no one make too much of a fuss about things. But put an Egyptian in the driver's seat and he shows all the calm and consideration of a hooded swordsman delivering Islamic justice. ~ Tony Horwitz

It was a terrible battle. The most dreadful of all Bilbo's experiences, and the one which at the time he hated most - which is to say it was the one he was most proud of, and most fond of recalling long afterwards, although he was quite unimportant in it. Actually I may say he put on his ring early in the business, and vanished from sight, if not from all danger. A magic ring of that sort is not a complete protection in a goblin charge, nor does it stop flying arrows and wild spears; but it does help in getting out of the way, and it prevents your head from being specially chosen for a sweeping stroke by a goblin swordsman. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

The best swordsman in the world may be disarmed by a trick that's new to him. ~ C.S. Lewis

When the mindfulness of a samurai swordsman fails, he loses his life. When we lose mindfulness in daily life, something similar happens. We become so entangled in our own thoughts and emotions that we lose contact with the bigger picture. ~ Culadasa

I am not sure if women are attracted to genius. Can you imagine the wise wizard winning the woman over the gallant swordsman? It seems rather otherworldly in more ways than one. ~ Criss Jami

The king, the priest, the rich man - who lives and who dies? Who will the swordsman obey? It's a riddle without an answer, or rather, too many answers. ~ George R R Martin

When composing a verse let there not be a hair's breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy. ~ Matsuo Basho

Your definition of 'well' is troubling at best." He suddenly smiled and affected a slight accent. "'I do not think that word means what you think it means.'"
He was obviously quoting something he and Jason seemed to know that she did not.
Jason grinned. "Ha, she ain't a princess, and you wish you were that good a swordsman. ~ Ilona Andrews

Did you hear about the recently discovered temple in the Sudan ?"
I stared at him. "Yeah. I'm a regular reader of National Geographic."
Ol' Frankie's brows quirked. "You wield sarcasm, madam, as well as a master swordsman does."
"Gee, thanks." I smiled at him and batted my lashes.
Quit flirting . Patrick flicked the command into my head. He sounded half-annoyed, half-amused.
I'm not flirting.
Quit being cute and likeable.
An impossible request. I've always been too adorable for words. ~ Michele Bardsley

Air swirled over her shoulders leaving a wake of chilled skin. To her left something stirred in the shadows. She blinked. The swordsman stood by the fire, as clear and solid as day. Her heart thundered in her ears so loud he must surely hear. She started to sit up, then remembered her naked state. Water sloshed in the tub. "I beg your pardon."

He inclined his head. Steam from the water swirled, but Olivia saw his dark hair. He was tall and wore a tunic worked with red and gold. A leather strap crossed from right shoulder to left waist and held the scabbard fastened across his back. A jeweled belt circled his waist. His eyes matched the blue of the sky. The way he stood struck her as familiar. She closed her eyes. He was still there when she opened them again. "I am not mad," she said. "Is that you? Edith?"

Even with the distance between them and the mist swirling in the air, she saw his blue eyes, the arrogant set to his shoulders that came of years of wealth and breeding. His grin sent a flare of alarm up her spine. He took a step toward her, and for one dreadful moment, she was convinced he was as real as she was. He tipped his head and spread his arms wide, as if to prove himself harmless. "Go away." She wasn't afraid of him precisely. She was afraid of being mad. "Please, just go away."

He shook his head.

"I am not mad," she whispered.

He shook his head again. "I wish you were real. ~ Carolyn Jewel