Honor is not diminished for being shared.
--Lois McMaster Bujold Shards of Honor
Tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something
worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune.
--Lois McMaster Bujold Shards of Honor
Exile, for no other motive than ease, would be the last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it.
--Lois McMaster Bujold Shards of Honor
Any community’s arm of force—military, police, security—needs people in it who can do the necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary, and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity.
--Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar
Experience suggests it doesn't matter so much how you got here, as what you do after you arrive.
--Lois McMaster Bujold Barrayar
The most insidious lie is the one you want to hear.
--Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar
Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible. We're not giving up. We're waiting for a better opportunity to win.
--Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar
My home is not a place, it is people.
--Lois McMaster Bujold Barrayar
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.
--Lois McMaster Bujold The Warrior's Apprentice
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 The Vor Game
A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind.
--Lois McMaster Bujold The Vor Game
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 Ethan of Athos
There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.
--Lois McMaster Bujold Ethan of Athos
If you want to catch something, running after it isn't always the best way.
--Lois McMaster Bujold Borders of Infinity
The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives.
--Lois McMaster Bujold Brothers in Arms
Principles come and go… human souls are immortal, and you should therefore throw in your lot with the greater part.
--Lois McMaster Bujold Brothers in Arms
Half of what we call madness is just some poor slob dealing with pain by a strategy that annoys the people around him.
--Lois McMaster Bujold Mirror Dance
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.
--Lois McMaster Bujold Mirror Dance
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 damn rush to give yourself to them you go bat-blind and deaf.
--Lois McMaster Bujold Mirror Dance
I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is…the higher achievement.
--Lois McMaster Bujold Mirror Dance
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 Bujuold Memory
If you can't do what you want, do what you can.
--Lois McMaster Bujold Memory
It was never what I wanted to buy that held my heart's hope. It was what I wanted to be.
--Lois McMaster Bujold Memory
How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old?
--Lois McMaster Bujold Memory
Adversity does teach who your real friends are.
--Lois McMaster Bujold A Civil Campaign
As for happiness… I don’t think you can give that to anyone, if they don’t have it in them. However, it’s certainly possible to give un-happiness.
--Lois McMaster Bujold A Civil Campaign
Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.
--Lois McMaster Bujold A Civil Campaign
Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.
--Lois McMaster Bujold A Civil Campaign
A tactical retreat is not a bad response to a surprise assault, you know. First you survive. Then you choose your own ground. Then you counterattack.
--Lois McMaster Bujold A Civil Campaign
If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?
--Lois McMaster Bujold A Civil
Campaign
You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity.
--Lois McMaster Bujold A Civil
Campaign
The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.
--Lois McMaster Bujold Diplomatic Immunity
If the truth doesn't save us, what does that say about us?
--Lois McMaster Bujold Diplomatic Immunity
Dresses are weapons, my dear, in sufficiently skilled hands.
--Lois McMaster Bujold "Winterfaire
Gifts" from Irresistible Forces
Other Lois McMaster Bujold pages:
The Bujold Nexus - The Official Lois McMaster Bujold Homepage
Women Who Rock the World: Lois McMaster Bujold
SCIFI.COM Chat Transcript: Lois McMaster Bujold, July 24, 2001