543 quotes
Don’t promote your troubles beyond your rank.
Penric's Mission (2016)
An honor is not diminished for being shared.
Shards of Honor (1986)
My home is not a place, it is a person, sir.
Barrayar (1991)
One couldn’t fix the past, only the present.
The Flowers of Vashnoi (2018)
Second sight is redundant to reason anyway.
The Curse of Chalion (2000)
I hate an enemy who doesn’t make mistakes.
The Borders of Infinity (1987)
Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how, they may endure.
The Curse of Chalion (2000)
Never argue with a pedant over nomenclature. It wastes your time and annoys the pedant.
Memory (1996)
Good soldiers never pass up a chance to eat or sleep. They never know how much they’ll be called on to do before the next chance.
Barrayar (1991)
A person’s things can be a kind of exterior morphology of their mind.
Shards of Honor (1986)
Mother Nature gives a sense of romance to young people, in place of prudence, to advance the species. It’s a trick—that makes us grow.
Mirror Dance (1994)
And so men organized themselves for the sake of their technology as they never had for their principles. The sea’s politics were unarguable.
Brothers in Arms (1989)
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? Too damaged.
Memory (1996)
“Women shouldn’t be in combat,” said Vorkosigan, grimly glum.
“Neither should men, in my opinion.”
Shards of Honor (1986)
In my experience, milady, we can never get back to exactly where we started, no matter how hard we try.
Cetaganda (1996)
“Face like an angel, mind like a rabid mongoose?”
Oser’s lips twitched very slightly. “You’ve met her.”
The Vor Game (1990)
Egalitarians adjust to aristocracies just fine, as long as they get to be the aristocrats.
Cetaganda (1995)
“Good luck,” snorted Ivan.
“Luck is something you make for yourself, if you want it.”
Cetaganda (1996)
There are a number of people in the universe I’d be willing to double-cross, but my own wounded aren’t among ’em.
Brothers in Arms (1989)
Real survivalists don’t run off into the woods; they stay and work to prevent disaster.