Lois McMaster Quotes
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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.
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And this was your friend?" Cordelia raised her eyebrows. "Seems to me the only difference between your friends and your enemies is how long the stand around chatting before they shoot you.
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The principle difference between heaven and hell is the company you keep there.
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I am an atheist, myself. A simple faith, but a great comfort to me, in these last days.
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Some men just aren't cut out for paternity. Better they should realize it before and not after they become responsible for a son.
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Your father calls you to his court. You need not pack. You go garbed in glorious raiment. He waits eagerly by his palace doors to welcome you, and has prepared a place at the high table, by his side, in the company of the great-souled, honored, and best-beloved.
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Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how, they may endure.
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What you are is a question only you can answer.
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Anything worth achieving is worth overachieving.
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Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.
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I am not a fate worse than death, dammit!
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The world is made by the people who show up for the job.
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Your Reverence, I do not hate any man in this world enough to inflict the results of my prayers upon him.
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A good friend of my son's is a son to me.
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The gods give no gifts without hooks embedded.
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It’s important that someone celebrate our existence," she objected amiably. "People are the only mirror we have to see ourselves in. The domain of all meaning. All virtue, all evil, are contained only in people. There is none in the universe at large. Solitary confinement is a punishment in every human culture.
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Forward momentum only worked as a strategy if one had correctly identified which way was forward.
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Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.
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I've got forward momentum. There's no virtue in it. It's just a balancing act. I don't dare stop.
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Real destiny takes everything-the last drop of blood, and strip out your veins to be sure-and gives it back doubled. Quadrupled. A thousand-fold! But you can't give halves. You have to give it all. I know. I swear. I've come back from the dead to speak the truth to you. Real destiny gives you a mountain of life, and puts you on top of it.
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A price is something you get. A cost is something you lose.
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Aim high. You may still miss the target, but at least you won't shoot your foot off.
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People give themselves to you, in their talking, and in other ways, if you are quiet and patient and let them, and not in such a damned rush to give yourself to them you go bat-blind and deaf.
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When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.