Lois McMaster Bujold

If you can't be seven feet tall, be seven feet smart.

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

Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.

When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. When you desire a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.

I've always thought 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.

My home is not a place, it is people.

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.

Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.

Some people grow into their dreams, instead of out of them.

When the time comes to leap in faith whether you have your eyes open or closed or scream all the way down or not makes no practical difference.