Shards of Honour Quotes

“I've always thought 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 Honour

“The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present — they are real.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“An honor is not diminished for being shared.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“It was hell to be so tired, and still care.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“But when he’s cut, I bleed.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“He wanted to know what I saw in you. I told him..." he paused again, and then continued almost shyly, "that you poured out honor like a fountain, all around you."

"That's weird. I don't feel full of honor, or anything else, except maybe confusion."

"Naturally not. Fountains keep nothing for themselves.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“The good face pain. But the great? They embrace it.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“Yes," Vorkosigan agreed, "I could take over the universe with this army if I could ever get all their weapons pointed in the same direction.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“Women shouldn't be in combat," said Vorkosigan, grimly glum.
"Neither should men, in my opinion.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“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.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“Change is possible.'

'Change is inevitable.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“They stared at her curiously, and she caught snatches of conversation in two or three languages. It wasn't hard to guess their content, and she smiled a bit primly. Youth, it appeared, was full of illusions as to how much sexual energy two people might have to spare while hiking forty or so kilometers a day, concussed, stunned, diseased, on poor food and little sleep, alternating caring for a wounded man with avoiding becoming dinner for every carnivore within range - and with a coup to plan for the end.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“the unknown breeds dragons in map margins”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“No, amusing me only, I wonder if they realize how they are used?"
"Not a bit. They think they are the emperors of creation."
"Poor lambs."
"That's not how I'd describe them."
"I was thinking of animal sacrifice."
"Ah. That's closer.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“He said that permitting private judgments to turn my duty in the smallest matter would be just like getting a little bit pregnant -- that the consequences would very soon get beyond me.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“(T)he cadet was too young to believe in death after life.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“Leadership is mostly a power over imagination, and never more so than in combat.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“Wait." He paused, and she held out a hand to him. His thick fingers engulfed her tapering ones; his skin was warm and dry, and scorched her. "Before we go pick up poor Lieutenant Illyan again..."

He took her in his arms, and they kissed, for the first time, for a long time.

"Oh," she muttered after. "Perhaps that was a mistake. It hurts so much when you stop."

"Well, let me..." his hand stroked her hair, gently, then desperately wrapped itself in a shimmering coil; they kissed again.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“I thought you saw meaning in that sort of thing," said Vorkosigan.
"In the abstract. Most days it's just stumbling around in the dark with the rest of creation, smashing into things and wondering why it hurts.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “The dead cannot hurt you. They give you no pain, except that of seeing your own death in their faces. And one can face that, I find.”

Yes, he thought, the good face pain. But the great—they embrace it.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“It must be quite a shock to suddenly find out you're pregnant, seventeen times over—at your age, too.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“So in the physics of the heart, distance is relative; it's time that's absolute.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“A Caligula, or a Yuri Vorbarra, can rule a long time, while the best men hesitate to do what is necessary to stop him, and the worst ones take advantage.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“I believe," she said slowly at last, "that the tormented are very close to God. I'm sorry, Sergeant." He”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“Koudelka puzzled over this attempted readjustment of his point of view, then let it bounce harmlessly off his impermeable habits of thought.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“She took the story in like some strange, spiked gift, too fragile to drop, too painful to hold.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“From spaceman to caveman in three days,” she meditated aloud. “How we imagine our civilization is in ourselves, when it’s really in our things.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“Save me from that! To pour your life into sons for eighteen or twenty years, and then have the government take them away and waste them cleaning up after some failure of politics—no thanks.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“Remarkable ploy of the Barrayarans," Mehta expounded thoughtfully. "Concealing an espionage ring under the cover of a love affair. I might even have bought it, if the principals had been more likely."

"Yes," Cordelia agreed cordially, writhing within. "One doesn't expect a thirty-four-year-old to fall in love like an adolescent. Quite an unexpected - gift, at my age. Even more unexpected at forty-four, I gather."

"Exactly," said Mehta, pleased by Cordelia's ready understanding. "A middle-aged career officer is hardly the stuff of romance.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“Well, I don’t hate him. Can’t say as I worship him, either.” She paused a long time, and looked up to meet her mother’s eyes square on. “But when he’s cut, I bleed.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour