The Grace of Kings

What is fate but coincidences in retrospect?

What is so bad about being compared to women?” Kuni said. “Half the world is made of women.

A lord who knows how to wield men is ten times more fearsome than one who knows only how to wield a sword.

There’s never going to be an end to suffering if ‘he deserves it’ is all the justification people need for inflicting pain.

Old friends are like old clothes: they fit the best.

Maybe Soto was right. It was silly to make a fetish out of love, and not to accept that love was like food, and each dish had its own flavor. The heart surely had room for more than one.

Now that’s the sort of thing I wish the nobles said more often,” Dafiro whispered to Ratho. “While they resolve all their disputes this way, the rest of us can go back to planting our harvests and enjoying our lives. Let the kings and dukes get in an arena and fight all their wars with their own two hands. We’ll watch and cheer them on.

A man who can kill several people with a sword is merely a living weapon. A great warrior can kill thousands of men with just his mind.

I've always thought it nonsense to believe something true simply because it was written in a book long ago.

He was like a seed still tethered to the withered flower, just waiting for the dead air of the late summer evening to break, for the storm to begin.

The more perfect the ideals, the less ideal the methods.

If you insist on fighting every fight that comes your way, you’re simply letting them push you around in a different way.

Read a lot of books and try a lot of recipes," Jia said. "When you learn enough about the world, even a blade of grass can be a weapon.

It's easy for men to be friends as close as brothers when they're poor and struggling, but much harder when things are going well. Friends are never as close as blood. Remember that, Rat.

You can’t tell how high a kite can fly without being willing to let all the string out.

There is often no line between perfection and evil.

He had truly meant to pay her a compliment when he told her how different she was from “those silly young noblewomen,” had truly believed that she would be flattered to be thought extraordinary from her sex. It was men like him who had made her into a symbol, had put her into this impossible position. But, in a way, that made the task easy. She knew exactly what she needed to say and do, and she even enjoyed the challenge of playing the role of his ideal: She was worthy only insofar as she oriented herself to men, like a sunflower adoring the sun.

Kuni was the sort of man, Risana realized, who, rather than deceive himself, was so full of self-doubt that he could no longer see himself.

Great men and women are not constrained in the forms their loves may take," said Soto. "You and Jia may love others, but in each other's estimation, you'll always be first among equals." "But it will never be smooth sailing and all sunshine, will it?" "What would be the fun in that?

Sometimes it was hard to tell where the performance ended and the real self began - but what was this "real" self other than a set of performances?

The heart is a complicated thing, and we're capable of many loves, though we're told that we must value one to the exclusion of others...You can be loyal to your husband at the same time that you take a lover for your own sake, though the poets tell us this is wrong. But why should we believe that the poets understand us better than we do ourselves?

Sometimes, the anger built up so much that people had to scream out their treasonous thoughts just to keep on breathing. Maybe not all of the were really crazy, but it was best for everyone involved to pretend that they were.

The way I look at it is this: If you try to obey the law, and the judges call you a criminal anyway, then you might as well live up to the name.

Taking away men's weapons will be not bring peace. They'll fight with sticks and stones, and tooth and nail. Mapidéré's is a peace supported only by fear, as secure as a nest built on a rotten branch.

Safety is an illusion, as is faith without temptation. We’re imperfect, unlike the gods, but in that imperfection we may yet make them jealous.

Safety is an illusion, as is faith without temptation.

As the moon rose, I saw the light illuminate an ancient quote from the Ano Classics, carved into one of the broken lintels: ‘All life is an experiment.

Sir, a reformed man is worth ten men virtuous from birth, for he understands temptation and will strive the harder to not stray.

We are old friends,” Cogo said. “But men have roles and masks that they wear, and these have a reality of their own. Authority is a delicate thing, and it must be carefully cultivated by proper ritual and action from the governing and the governed alike.