No world lacks its villains so self-confident that they don’t believe they can get the best end of a bargain with the darkness. - Glen Cook

My arguments were beginning to sound a little strained to me, too. I was in the position of a priest trying to sell religion.

I still got all my limbs and I'm still breathing."
"Makes you a winner in the soldiering game.

The people come from everywhere, from five hundred miles, to find their fortunes. But Fortune is an ugly, two-faced goddess.
When you have lived with her handiwork for half a generation, you hardly notice anymore. You forget that this is not the way life has to be. You cease to marvel at just how much evil man can conjure simply by existing.