There will be grace and forgiveness enough, old dog, even for you. I pray you will spare me a drink from that cup, when it overflows for you.- Miles Vorkosigan

It wasn’t a case of storming heaven. It was a case of letting heaven storm you.

Change is possible.”Change is inevitable.

It’s just a thing. You deal with it.” “As in, one damn thing after another?””Yes, very like.

I am not schizoid. A little manic-depressive, maybe.””‘Know thyself.'” “We try, sir.

Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.

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.

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...

But personally, I think [sainthood] is not so much the growth of virtue, as simply the replacement of prior vices with an addiction to one’s god.

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...

We see the world not as it is, but as we are.~Dag Redwing Hickory Bluefield

The fourth approved approach for the problem of frontally attacking a guarded wormhole was to shoot the officer who suggested it.

Women do desperately need models for power other than the maternal.

Apologizing to me again, thought Miles miserably. For me. He keeps telling me I’m all right—and then apologizing. Inconsistent, Father.He shuffled back and forth across the room again, and his pain burst into speech. He...

Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.

Take heart, sir,” Cazaril consoled him. “It is not your destiny today to win a royacy for your son. It is to win an empire for your grandson.

It’s a . . . transcendental act. Making life. . . . ‘By this act, I bring one death into the world.’ One birth, one death, and all the pain and acts of will between....

I wanted to give you a victory. But by their essential nature triumphs can’t be given.

It was suicide, wasn’t it?””In an involuntary sort of way,” said Vorob’yev. “These Cetagandan political suicides can get awfully messy, when the principal won’t cooperate.””Thirty-two stab wounds in the back, worst case of suicide they...

I miss it every minute, and I have no wish at all to go back.

Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice – if not whether, then how, they may endure.

There is a sad disconnectedness that overcomes a library when its owner is gone.

Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible.

Do it for yourself. The universe will be around to collect its cut later.

Anyway, if the Cetagandans really wanted to assassinate you, they’d hardly do it here. They’d slip something subtle under your skin that wouldn’t go off for six months, and then would drop you mysteriously and...

But when he’s cut, I bleed.

Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.

When I was a wee little kid,” remarked Roic, watching over their shoulders, “there was a time I thought that any skinny old man I saw was my grandfather. It was pretty confusing.

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.

Not that I haven’t leaped up into the blinding light of competence now and then. It’s sustaining the altitude that defeats me.

Think of the glory. Think of your reputation. Think how great it’ll look on your next resume.”On my cenotaph, you mean. Nobody will be able to collect enough of my scattered atoms to bury. You...

Lately I have come to believe that the principle difference between Heaven and Hell is the company you keep there….

The real unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, without anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but...

If only one didn’t know that at the secret heart of all such organizations, corporations and governments alike, it still came down to a finite number of fallible people talking to each other . . . ​

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...

Lakewalker legends say the gods abandoned the world when the first malice came. And that they will return when the earth is entirely cleansed of its spawn. If you believe in gods.””Do you?””I believe they...

The gods’ most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business.

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.

[Koudelka] looked back, “You?! I know you! You trust beyond reason!”[Cordelia] met his eyes steadily, “Yes, it’s how I get results beyond hope, as you may recall.

You must learn to give, from sufficiency, not only take, from neediness.

When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.

But though you’d never starve your body to wasting and still expect to go on, you starve your heart, yet act as though you can still draw on it forever without the debt ever coming...

Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework: never finished.

Lord X was a tyrant, not a revolutionary. He wanted to take over the system, not change it.

This wasn’t prayer anyway, it was just argument with the gods.Prayer, he suspected as he hoisted himself up and turned for the door, was putting one foot in front of the other. Moving all the...

He was shaken by an unwelcome insight. Lives did not add as integers. They added as infinities.

It’s a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn’t even know you were aiming for.

Royse Bergon: “I’ve seen your integrity in action. It…widened my world. I’d been raised by my father, who is a prudent, cautious man, always looking for men’s hidden, selfish motivations. No one can cheat him....

everyone has their folding-point, Miles. Their mortal vulnerability. Some just keep it in a nonstandard location.

(Watching her) was a little like watching water lilies; rather more like smelling a dinner he was not allowed to eat. Was it possible to be starved for so long as to forget the taste...