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Lois McMaster Bujold
628 quotes
“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 (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A skilled soldier kills your enemies, but a skilled duelist kills your allies.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The shocked silence that followed was decidedly baffled. And even, possibly, a little thoughtful, if that was not too much to hope.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can't solve problems by running away from them, it was said, and like the good child she had once been, she had believed this. But it wasn't true. Some problems could only be solved by running away from them.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And the Bastard grant us . . . in our direst need, the smallest gifts: the nail of the horseshoe, the pin of the axle, the feather at the pivot point, the pebble at the mountain's peak, the kiss in despair, the one right word. In darkness, understanding.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You must go home eventually." "I would throw myself off a precipice first, except that I would land in the arms of the gods, Whom I do not wish to see again.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A stunning first impression was not the same thing as love at first sight. But surely it was an invitation to consider the matter.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The entire center of her life was a blackened waste, its long years not to be recovered nor replaced.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The gods give no gifts without hooks embedded.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So, you dragged me here, whichever of You harries me. But you cannot force me through that door. Nor can you open it yourselves. You cannot lift so much as a leaf; bending iron or my will is a task equally beyond your capacities. They were at a stand, she and the gods.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have denied my eyes, both inner and outer. I am not a child, or virgin, or modest wife, fearing to offend. No one owns my eyes now but me. If I have not the stomach by now to look upon any sight in the world, good or evil, beautiful or vile, when shall I? It is far too late for innocence. My only hope is the much more painful consolation of wisdom. Which can grow out of knowledge alone. Give me my true eyes. I want to see. I have to know.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I would be considerably more impressed with your god, dy Cabon," said Ista through her teeth, "if He could have arranged one life's worth of simple protection in advance, rather than three hundred lives' worth of gaudy vengeance afterward.”
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“Such a perilous concentration of demons would create chaos all around it." "War gathers on these borders," said Ista. "A greater concentration of chaos I can hardly imagine.”
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“He gave me no sign. I was never the sort to receive portents, or to delude myself that I had. Silence was always my portion, in return for my prayers.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You are a most excellent lawyer, for a dead man.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One learns better than to hand one's choices to fear. With age, with every wound and scar, one learns.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The gods would take him and leave me bereft, and I curse them!" "I have cursed them for years," said Ista dryly. "Turnabout being fair.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are all, every living one of us, doorways between the two realms, that of matter that gives us birth, and that of spirit into which we are born in death.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An hour will suffice. If it is the right hour.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...your soul is your own, now, to make of what you will. We are all of us, every one, our own works: we present our souls to our Patrons at the ends of our lives as an artisan presents the works of his hands.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One scarcely knows if he would be of more use to us as a hostage, or set loose to be a very bad enemy leader.”
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“Too little payment for a crime, too much for an accident.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Boleso’s men, Ingrey was reminded, were out of the habit of questioning the sense of their superiors’ orders. Or perhaps it was that any who dared were got rid of, one way or another, and these were the remainder. Residue. Scum.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your pleasure, my lord?” he inquired nervously. To be anywhere but here, doing anything but this.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So when Audar the so-called Great slaughtered four thousand Wealding prisoners of war at Bloomfield, it’s said he didn’t pray at all. That made it a proper Quintarian act, I suppose, and not heresy. Some other crime, perhaps, but not human sacrifice. One of those theological fine points.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It still felt like hauling buckets from a well of memory with a rope that burned his hands.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Indifference served him quite as well as integrity.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those who are unwilling to admit error are fated to repeat it?”
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“Oswin was the most perfect servant of the Father, always so concerned for figuring out the exact rules and getting himself on the right side of them. Or them on the left side of him.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I saw no reason to stop my life for other people’s theories.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All sorts of men had the capacity to kill for the convenience of their betters; though usually, the only spell required could be fitted in a clinking purse.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All my life I have prayed, and all my life I have been refused answer. I scarcely believed in the gods anymore, or if I did, it was only to curse them for their indifference. They betrayed my father, who had served Them loyally all his life. They betrayed my mother, or They were powerless to save her, which was as bad or worse. If a god has come to me, He certainly hasn’t come for me!”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“High court politics,” said Ingrey slowly, “are as godless as anything I know.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And what guidance did you receive for all your prayers, lady?” She bit her lip. “None.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But have you ever overheard two women discussing men? Men are crude liars, comparing their drabs, but women—I'd rather have a Mother's anatomist dissect me alive than to listen to the things the ladies say about us when they think they are alone.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is as much an error to take truth for lies, as lies for truth.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is not, you know, that you lie well, cousin. It’s merely that no one is foolhardy enough to call you on it. This may have given you an inflated idea of your skill at dissimulation.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do not know where I am going. But I am quite weary enough of where I’ve been.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Magical powers worked sometimes; material powers worked all the time.”
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“The gods have no hands in this world but ours. If we fail Them, where then can They turn?”
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“Her lips curved up. “That’s very Ingrey of you, Ingrey. Always look on the dark side.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Such corruption feeds on its own success when it meets no correction.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So much of the uncanny—or the holy, for that matter—is inward experience. As such, testimony about it tends to be tainted. People lie. People delude themselves, or others. People are swayed or frightened or convinced they have seen things they have not. People are, frankly, sometimes simply mad.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh, fine new friends you have—until They betray you. If the gods toy with you, cousin, it is for Their ends, not yours.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It must have been an interesting chat. Did Cumril survive it?” “Temporarily.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you fear the gods will destroy you?” That disturbing smile again. “That is not a fear. That is a prayer.” “Or…do you fear their punishment? That they would plunge your soul into some eternal torment?” Wencel leaned forward, up on his toes. “That,” he breathed in Ingrey’s ear, “would be redundant.”
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“I learned long ago not to exhaust myself grappling problems that time will carry away on its tide.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If there is one thing that I have come to hate more than the gods, it is time.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source