Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes

226 Sourced Quotes

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.

Lois McMaster Bujold
The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Some men just aren't cut out for paternity. Better they should realize it before and not after they become responsible for a son.

Lois McMaster Bujold
A skilled soldier kills your enemies, but a skilled duelist kills your allies.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Mother Nature gives a sense of romance to young people, in place of prudence, to advance the species. It's a trick—that makes us grow.

Lois McMaster Bujold
No, no, never send interim reports. Only final ones. Interim reports tend to elicit orders. Which you must either then obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, which you could be using to solve the problem.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Behavior that is rewarded is repeated. And the reverse.

Lois McMaster Bujold
If there's no game, isn't winning a pretty meaningless concept?

Lois McMaster Bujold
Honesty is the only way with anyone, when you'll be so close as to be living inside each other's skins.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Mine is not a theology of the elect. I intend to preach to the masses. Even the sinners.

Lois McMaster Bujold
I have an aversion to closed doors anyway. You never know what's on the other side.

Lois McMaster Bujold
I am who I choose to be. I always have been what I chose…though not always what I pleased.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Like integrity, love of life was not a subject to be studied, it was a contagion to be caught. And you had to catch it from someone who had it.

Lois McMaster Bujold
The gods... the gods may forgive much, to a truly penitent heart."
Her smile grew bitter as desert brine. "The gods may forgive Ista all day long. But if Ista does not forgive Ista, the gods may go hang themselves."

Lois McMaster Bujold
I was never a mercenary, not ever. Not for one single minute.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Oh, was that liquor of yours a stimulant?" asked Elena. "I wondered why he didn't fall asleep." "Couldn't you tell?" chuckled Mayhew. "Not really." Miles twisted his head to take in Elena's upside-down worried face, and smile in weak reassurance. Sparkly black and purple whirlpools clouded his vision. Mayhew's laughter faded. "My God," he said hollowly, "you mean he's like that all the time?

Lois McMaster Bujold
When I go down into the ground at last, as God is my judge, I pray my best-beloved may have better to say of me than, "He didn't hit me."

Lois McMaster Bujold
There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Cynicism did not seem nearly so impressively daring to her now as it had when she was twenty.

Lois McMaster Bujold
"Do you know what this is, Lord Vorkosigan?" Giaja asked.
Miles eyed the medallion of the Order of Merit on its colored ribbon, glittering on a bed of velvet. "Yes, sir. It is a lead weight, suitable for sinking small enemies. Are you going to sew me into a silk sack with it, before you throw me overboard?"

Lois McMaster Bujold
Why did so many antique myths agree that hell was a circular place?

Lois McMaster Bujold
The man who assumes everything is a lie is at least as mistaken as the one who assumes everything is true.

Lois McMaster Bujold