Elizabeth Moon · 1040 pages
Rating: (10.8K votes)
“Even if a tamed wolf makes a good sheepdog, he will never understand how the sheep feel....You are most fortunate. For having been, as you thought, a coward, and helpless to fight - you know what that is like. You know what bitterness that feeling breeds - you know in your own heart what kind of evil it brings. And so you are most fit to fight it where it occurs.”
― Elizabeth Moon, quote from The Deed of Paksenarrion
“We do not argue that war is better than peace; we are not so stupid as that. But it is not peace when cruelty reigns, when stronger men steal from farmers and craftworkers, when the child can be enslaved or the old thrown out to starve, and no one lifts a hand. That is not peace: that is conquest, and evil.”
― Elizabeth Moon, quote from The Deed of Paksenarrion
“it is much the same, I daresay, wherever and whenever men desire power and the use of power on others.”
― Elizabeth Moon, quote from The Deed of Paksenarrion
“Paks, if you've got a fault it's that you're too willing to be ruled. I know what you'll say—you'll say that's how a good soldier is.”
― Elizabeth Moon, quote from The Deed of Paksenarrion
“Of death I am as certain as any mortal, Ammerlin, but defeat is certain only in despair.”
― Elizabeth Moon, quote from The Deed of Paksenarrion
“And this, she saw, her dream had done. She had built against that fear a vision of power not wholly selfish—power to protect not only herself, but others. And that vision—however partial it had been in those days—was worth following. For it led not away from the fear, as a dream of rule might do, but back into it. The pattern of her life—as she saw it then, clear and far away and painted in bright colors—the pattern of her life was like an intricate song, or the way the Kuakgan talked of the grove's interlacing trees. There below were the dream's roots, tangled in fear and despair, nourished in the death of friends, the bones of the strong, the blood of the living, and there high above were the dream's images, bright in the sun like banners or the flowering trees of spring. And to be that banner, or that flowering branch, meant being nourished by the same fears: meant encompassing them, not rejecting them.”
― Elizabeth Moon, quote from The Deed of Paksenarrion
“You have fought a hard battle, in hard conditions, and held a position until help came. Think of it like that.”
― Elizabeth Moon, quote from The Deed of Paksenarrion
“Yet powerful as they were, as powerful as music that brings heart-piercing pain, tears, laughter, with its enchantments, they were as music, subordinate to their own creator. Humans need not, Paks saw, worship their immortality, their cool wisdom, their knowledge of the taig, their ability to repattern mortal perceptions. In brief mortal lives humans met challenges no elf could meet, learned strategies no elf could master, chose evil or good more direct and dangerous than elf could perceive. Humans were shaped for conflict, as elves for harmony; each needed the other's balance of wisdom, but must cleave to its own nature. It was easy for an immortal to counsel patience, withdrawal until a danger passed . . .”
― Elizabeth Moon, quote from The Deed of Paksenarrion
“When—notice that I do not say if, being granted almost as much stubbornness as you, by Gird's grace—when you find that you can swear your honor to Gird's fellowship, it will be my pleasure to give and receive your strokes. Is that satisfactory, or have you more conditions for a Marshal-General of Gird, and Captain-Temporal of the High Lord?" Paks”
― Elizabeth Moon, quote from The Deed of Paksenarrion
“You'll find, someday," Paks found herself saying, "that your own tongue cuts you worse than any blade. I”
― Elizabeth Moon, quote from The Deed of Paksenarrion
“The quietness spread, from gray eyes that held no hatred for those who spat at her face or tasted her blood, from a voice that could scream in pain yet mouth no curses after, that spoke, between screams, in a steady confirmation of all good. Those”
― Elizabeth Moon, quote from The Deed of Paksenarrion
“The “working poor,” as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else. As Gail, one of my restaurant coworkers put it, “you give and you give.”
― Barbara Ehrenreich, quote from Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America
“I wish I could print up a sign and tape it on my forehead. I OFFICIALLY DO NOT WANT TO KISS ETHAN WATE. NOW PLEASE LET ME BE FRIENDS WITH HIM.”
― Kami Garcia, quote from Beautiful Chaos
“Learn how to smile in the cannibal pot and life will be so much easier.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i
“Miss Thorne said no more. Poor boy, she thought, away from his loving home and now dumped with an irritable old man. Tom”
― Michelle Magorian, quote from Good Night, Mr. Tom
“Kitten?"
"Yeah?"
His eyes were beautiful when they met mine, luminous and clear, and a long moment stretched out between us. "I love you.”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, quote from Opposition
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