Lois McMaster Bujold - "A Civil Campaign", 1999

Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.
Lois McMaster Bujold - Mirror Dance, 1994, p. 287
Since no one is perfect, it follows that all great deeds have been accomplished out of imperfection. Yet they were accomplished, somehow, all the same.
Lois McMaster Bujold - "Memory", 1996
I am who I choose to be. I always have been what I chose?though not always what I pleased.
Lois McMaster Bujold - A Civil Campaign, 1999
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 - "Shards of Honor", 1986
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", 1986
An honor is not diminished for being shared.
Lois McMaster Bujold - A Civil Campaign, 1999
Adversity does teach who your real friends are.
Lois McMaster Bujold - "Brothers in Arms"
The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives.
Lois McMaster Bujold - "The Vor Game", 1990
A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind.

Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.
Lois McMaster Bujold - "Memory", 1996
You try to give away what you want yourself.
Lois McMaster Bujold - "Barrayar", 1991
Our children change us?whether they live or not.
Lois McMaster Bujold - A Civil Campaign, 1999
You have to be careful who you let define your good.
Lois McMaster Bujold - "Barrayar", 1991
But pain... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?
Lois McMaster Bujold - "Barrayar", 1991
My home is not a place, it is people.
Lois McMaster Bujold - Memory
All true wealth is biological.
Lois McMaster Bujold - "Memory", 1996
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 - Diplomatic Immunity, 2002
The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.
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 - "Barrayar", 1991
Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.
Lois McMaster Bujold - Ethan of Athos, 1986
There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.
Lois McMaster Bujold - A Civil Campaign, 1999
When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.
Lois McMaster Bujold - "Memory", 1996
His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.

- Lois McMaster Bujold - "A Civil Campaign", 1999