A Lesson in Mannis:
"I am king. Wants do not enter into it. I have a duty to my daughter. To the realm. Even to Robert. He loved me but little, I know, yet he was my brother. The Lannister woman gave him horns and made a motley fool of him. She may have murdered him as well, as she murdered Jon Arryn and Ned Stark. For such crimes there must be justice. Starting with Cersei and her abominations. But only starting. I mean to scour that court clean. As Robert should have done after the Trident."
"I shall bring justice to Westeros. Every man shall reap what he has sown, from the highest lord to the lowest gutter rat. And some will lose more than the tips off their fingers, I promise you. They have made my kingdom bleed, and I do not forget that."
“Yes, I should have come sooner. If not for my Hand, I might not have come at all. Lord Seaworth is a man of humble birth, but he reminded me of my duty, when all I could think of was my rights. I had the cart before the horse, Davos said. I was trying to win the throne to save the kingdom, when I should have been trying to save the kingdom to win the throne.” Stannis pointed north. "There is where I'll find the enemy I was born to fight."
"I stopped believing in gods the day I saw the Windproud break up across the bay. Any gods so monstrous as to drown my mother and father would never have my worship, I vowed. In King’s Landing, the High Septon would prattle at me of how all justice and goodness flowed from the Seven, but all I ever saw of either was made by men."
"When I was a lad I found an injured goshawk and nursed her back to health. Proudwing, I named her. She would perch on my shoulder and flutter from room to room after me and take food from my hand, but she would not soar. Time and again I would take her hawking, but she never flew higher than the treetops. Robert called her Weakwing. He owned a gyrfalcon named Thunderclap who never missed her strike. One day our great-uncle Ser Harbert told me to try a different bird. I was making a fool of myself with Proudwing, he said, and he was right." Stannis Baratheon turned away from the window, and the ghosts who moved upon the southern sea. "The Seven have never brought me so much as a sparrow. It is time I tried another hawk, Davos. A red hawk."
He ground his teeth. "We do not choose our destinies. Yet we must ... we must do our duty, no? Great or small, we must do our duty. Melisandre swears that she has seen me in her flames, facing the dark with Lightbringer raised on high. Lightbringer!" Stannis gave a derisive snort. "It glimmers prettily, I’ll grant you, but on the Blackwater this magic sword served me no better than common steel. A dragon would have turned that battle. Aegon once stood here as I do, looking down on this table. Do you think we would name him Aegon the Conqueror today if he had not had dragons?”
“Your Grace,” said Davos, “the cost…”
”I know the cost! Last night, gazing into that hearth, I saw things in the flames as well. I saw a king, a crown of fire on his brows, burning… burning, Davos. His own crown consumed his flesh and turned him into ash. Do you think I need Melisandre to tell me what that means? Or you?” The king moved, so his shadow fell upon King’s Landing. “If Joffrey should die… what is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom?”
"These pardoned lords would do well to reflect on that. Good men and true will fight for Joffrey, wrongly believing him the true king. A northman might even say the same of Robb Stark. But these lords who flocked to my brother’s banners knew him for a usurper. They turned their backs on their rightful king for no better reason than dreams of power and glory, and I have marked them for what they are. Pardoned them, yes. Forgiven. But not forgotten."
"My duty is to the realm.” His hand swept across the painted table. “How many boys dwell in Westeros? How many girls? How many men, how many women? The darkness will devour them all, she says. The night that never ends. She talks of prophecies... a hero reborn in the sea, living dragons hatched from dead stone... she speaks of signs and swears they point to me. I never asked for this, no more than I asked to be king. Yet dare I disregard her?”
“Make it Ser Jaime the Kingslayer henceforth,” Stannis said, frowning. “Whatever else the man may be, he remains a knight. I don’t know that we ought to call Robert my beloved brother either. He loved me no more than he had to, nor I him.”
“A harmless courtesy, Your Grace,” Pylos said.
“A lie. Take it out.”
He also throws the heaviest shade in all the seven kingdoms:
"Her own father got this child on her? We are well rid of her, then. I will not suffer such abominations here. This is not King's Landing."
"Without a son of Winterfell to stand beside me, I can only hope to win the North by battle. That requires stealing a leaf from my brother's book. Not that Robert ever read one."
"Robert could piss in a cup and men would call it wine, but I offer them cold clear water and they squint in suspicion and mutter to each other about how queer it tastes."
"Stannis ground his teeth. 'It is not my wish to tamper with your rights and traditions. As to royal guidance, Janos, if you mean that I ought to tell your brothers to choose you, have the courage to say so.'
That took Lord Janos aback. He smiled uncertainly and began to sweat, but Bowen Marsh beside him said, 'Who better to command the black cloaks than a man who once commanded the gold, sire?'
'Any of you, I would think. Even the cook.'"
Renly: "You'll be pleased to know she (Margaery) came to me a maid."
Stannis: "In your bed she's like to die that way."
At a wedding, thought Davos.
As he sat at his slayer's board, a guest beneath his roof. These Freys are cursed. He could smell the burning blood again, and hear the leech hissing and spitting on the brazier's hot coals.
"It was the Lord's wrath that slew him," Ser Axell Florent declared. "It was the hand of R'hllor!"
"Praise the Lord of Light!" sang out Queen Selyse, a pinched thin hard woman with large ears and a hairy upper lip.
"Is the hand of R'hllor spotted and palsied?" asked Stannis. "This sounds more Walder Frey's handiwork than any god's."
Davos: "Lord Celtigar called it admirable."
Stannis: "Had I shown him the contents of my privy, he would have called that admirable as well."