Lois McMaster Quotes
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In mysticism, knowledge cannot be separated from a certain way of life which becomes its living manifestation. To acquire mystical knowledge means to undergo a transformation; one could even say that the knowledge is the transformation. Scientific knowledge, on the other hand, can often stay abstract and theoretical. Thus most of today’s physicists do not seem to realize the philosophical, cultural and spiritual implications of their theories.
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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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If you're trying to take a roomful of people by surprise, it's a lot easier to hit your targets if you don't yell going through the door.
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No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Not when the enemy is me.
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Forward momentum only worked as a strategy if one had correctly identified which way was forward.
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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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If there's no game, isn't winning a pretty meaningless concept?
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Too late, he recalled Miles's dictum that the reward for a job well done was usually a harder job.
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I take it as a man's duty to restrain himself.
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Don't wish to be normal. Wish to be yourself. To the hilt. Find out what you're best at, and develop it, and hopscotch your weaknesses. Wish to be great at whatever you are.
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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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A price is something you get. A cost is something you lose.
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I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name.
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A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind.
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When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.
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Our children change us... whether they live or not.
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There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.
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The world demands I make good choices on no information, and then blames my maidenhood for my mistakes, as if my maidenhood were responsible for my ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.
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There was no limit to what one man might do, if he gave all, and held back nothing.
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All great human deeds both consume and transform their doers. Consider an athlete, a scientist, an artist, or an entrepreneur. In service of their goals, they lay down time, energy and many other choices and pleasures; in return, they become most truly themselves. A false destiny may be spotted by the fact that it consumes without transforming, without giving back the enlarged self.
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Most people go through their whole lives without killing anybody. False argument.
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Women do desperately need models for power other than the maternal.
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If you ever have to make a choice between learning and inspiration, choose learning. It works most of the time.
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His outflung hands traced over the threads of his rug, passed loop by loop through some patient woman's hands. Or maybe she hadn't been patient. Maybe she'd been tired, or irritated, or distracted, or hungry, or angry. Maybe she had been dying. But her hands had kept moving, all the same.