Lois McMaster Bujold - The Curse of Chalion (2001)

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

Lois McMaster Bujold
"Just what kind of noose are you offering to put round my neck, here? Is this treason?"
"Worse," Cazaril sighed. "Theology."

Lois McMaster Bujold
The joys of command — well, you know. You taught them to me. One part glory to ten parts shoveling manure.

Lois McMaster Bujold
I for one find a casual destruction of a man's life even more repugnant than a determined one.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Only the saints would joke so about the gods, because it was either joke or scream, and they alone knew it was all the same to the gods.

Lois McMaster Bujold
I think it (i. e., sainthood) is not so much the growth of virtue, as simply the replacement of prior vices with an addiction to one's god.

Lois McMaster Bujold
And you could just watch men begin to see what he told them they were seeing, whether it was there or not.

Lois McMaster Bujold
He found oddly little regret in his heart for his own lost life. He'd seen more of the world than most men ever did, and he'd had his chances, though the gods knew he'd made little enough of them. Marshaling his thoughts, as he sheltered under his covers, he realized with some wonder that his greatest dismay was for the work he'd be forced to leave undone.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Right or wrong, what I also saw was that you made an enemy, and left him alive behind you. Great charity. Bad tactics.

Lois McMaster Bujold
"Mercy from the Father and the Mother, mercy from the Sister and the Brother, Mercy from the Bastard, five times mercy, High Ones, we beseech you."… Mercy, High Ones. Not justice, please, not justice. We would all be fools to pray for justice.

Lois McMaster Bujold
If you desire a man to tell you comfortable lies about your prowess, and so fetter any hope of true excellence, I'm sure you may find one anywhere. Not all prisons are made of iron bars. Some are made of feather beds.

Lois McMaster Bujold
The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers, you know.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be.

Lois McMaster Bujold
I don't duel, boy. I kill as a soldier kills, which is as a butcher kills, as quickly, efficiently, and with as least risk to myself as I can arrange. If I decide you die, you will die when I choose, where I choose, by what means I choose, and you will never see the blow coming. (...)
I don't duel. But if you seek to die like a bludgeoned steer, cross me again.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Surely only correct understanding could lead to correct action.

Lois McMaster Bujold