The great love is gone. There are still little loves - friend to friend, brother to sister, student to teacher. Will you deny yourself comfort at the hearthfire of a cottage because you may no longer sit by the fireplace of a palace? Will you deny yourself to those who reach out to you in hopes of warming themselves at your hearthfire?

To treat a person like a carpet, it is necessary that one do the walking, and one allow himself to be walked on.--Shin'a'in saying

If I'm walking on thin ice, I might as well dance my way across.

Fanatics can justify practically any atrocity to themselves. The more untenable their position becomes, the harder they hold to it, and the worse the things they are willing to do to support it.

There’s no such thing as `one, true way’; the only answers worth having are the ones you find for yourself; leave the world better than you found it. Love, freedom, and the chance to do some good — they’re the things worth living and dying for, and if you aren’t willing to die for the things worth living for, you might as well turn in your membership in the human race.

I'm not out to disturb anybody's faith. I happen to be happy and comfortable with a belief system that has a dual deity and operates on a lunar schedule. It suits my needs. If you happen to be happy and comfortable with a belief system that features a single masculine deity and operates on a solar schedule, fine. I don't give a fat damn. What matters is what you do, not who's name you do it in.

Give your enemy a face, If he is human, do not dehumanize him. Know him and know why he is your enemy. If your enemy is within you, understand what it is and why you are afraid. Put a face on your fear. When you understand it, and it is no longer vague and shapeless, you will find that your fear is no longer so formidable.

Some must be warriors, that others may live in peace.

The freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose.

There’s a saying in Hardorn,” she continued. “‘You shouldn’t attempt to teach a goat to sing. It will waste your time, hurt your ears, and annoy the goat.’ I can say without fear of contradiction that the goat is getting annoyed.

If they projected the fact that they are dangerous any harder, there would be little puddles of "danger" on the floor around them. Look, it's "danger", don't step in it!

Mister Cameron - I have read the unexpurgated Ovid, the love poems of Sappho, the Decameron in the original, and a great many texts in Greek and Latin histories that were not though fit for proper gentlemen to read, much less proper ladies. I know in precise detail what Caligula did to, and with, his sisters, and I can quote it to you in Latin or in my own translation if you wish. I am interested in historical truth, and truth in history is often unpleasant and distasteful to those of fine sensibility. I frankly doubt that you will produce anything to shock me.

This I think I have learned: where there is love, the form does not matter, and the gods are pleased. This I have observed: what occurs in nature, comes by the hand of nature, and if the gods did not approve, it would not be there~ Moondance k'Treva (Magic's Pawn)

You marry who you think your beloved is, and then discover who they really are over the years. It’s that discovery that makes a marriage work.

In a calm, clear voice, she suggested that the wyrsa in question could do several highly improbable, athletically difficult and possibly biologically impractical things involving its own mother, a few household implements, and a dead fish.

Sometimes, it seemed, the business of a Witch or a Godmother was not so much using magic as knowing when not to use it.

Truth and trust are the means by which civilization holds off barbarism.

Keth, power brings with it the need to make moral judgments; history proves that. You have no choice but to make those decisions.

(From the Author Note at the beginning of the book.) Dorothy L. Sayers used to say that mystery stories were the only moral fiction of the modern world--because in a mystery, you were guaranteed to see that the bad got punished, the good got rewarded and in the end all was made

I have no place in my life for someone who is sure he can do everything.

Teach what you know, regardless of when you have learned it -- teach what you learned yesterday sagely, as if you have known it all your life, and teach what you have known for decades with enthusiasm, as if you learned it only yesterday.

Ree-" Grey barked into the icy silence. "Lax!"The word spat so unexpectedly into her ear had precisely the effect Grey must have intended. It shocked Nan for a split second into a state of not-thinking, just being-Suddenly, all in an instant she and Neville were one.

Why, you mean you didn't get abducted and dragged across country purely to make us a story for us to chew over endlessly?" asked Pip, tossing his shock of tow-colored hair indignantly. "The nerve!

I think I know why you never married, Sarah.""Well, and I reckoned if I wanted something that'd come and go as he pleased, take me for granted, and ignore me when he chose, I'd get a cat. And if I wanted something I'd always have to be picking up after, getting into trouble, but slavishly devoted, I'd get a dog.

...for a country whose people ceased to believe in magic soon lost much of their ability to imagine and dream, and before long, they ceased to believe--or hope-- for anything.

Kethry had once described summoning as being “like balancing on a rooftree while screaming an epic poem in a foreign language at the top of your lungs.

It's just as easy to be lonely in a city as out in the wilderness. Easier, really. It's harder to get to know someone when you meet in a crowded place. People can freely ignore you in the city; they can assume they don't have any responsibility for you. When there are fewer people, (...) they begin assuming some kind of responsibility, simply because you naturally do the same.

If only. Those must be the two saddest words in the world.

When you want something done, you ask a man. When you want it done quietly and without any fuss, you ask a woman.

Certainly no one has ever died of an unrequited passion—it's usually the ones that are requited that get people in trouble.

Adventure, yeah. I guess that's what you call it when everybody comes back alive.

It seems to me that evil is a kind of ultimate greed, a greed that is so all-encompassing that it can't ever see anything lovely, rare, or precious without wanting to possess it. A greed so total that if it can't possess these things, it will destroy them rather than chance that someone else might have them. And a greed so intense that even having these things never causes it to lessen one iota -- the lovely, the rare and the precious never affect it except to make it want them.

[Harrier] locked eyes with Zanattar. He couldn't remember another time in his life when he'd been this angry and hadn't hit something.

She would never truly be her own woman if she allowed fear and old memories to dictate where she would or would not go.

Inexperience can be overcome, ignorance can be enlightened, but prejudice will destroy you.

We're none of us quite so sure of our place in the world that we can't be rocked off our feet by bad times. It's the getting back up again that counts. Not that you fall, but getting back up again counts for more in the long run.

Not forgiving someone is like not pulling a thorn out of your foot just because you weren't the one to put it there.

You have a long history," he said, when Lanya indicated her story was finished. "Ah, Harrier, were I to tell you a long story, we should be here for a sennight, perhaps more. Long stories are best saved for deep winter, when the days are short and time grows heavy." Lanya glanced at the sky.

Once the blinders are off, it's rather hard to go back to seeing things the way you used to.

Nevertheless, now that I have met you, I know that all that I am, and all that I have, could not match what you are worth.

We believe that all those who are served should also spend time serving.

Words and love together can more often achieve what magic cannot.

Van, Van, we’re only simple, fallible mortals - we aren’t saints, we aren’t angels - we fall on our faces and make errors and sometimes people die of them - sometimes people we love dearly -

I'm tired of being alone, and fighting my battles alone.

So her safe little world would never be safe again... She knew that the nurturing hand also held the knife, and that was very unsettling.

Weapons master is giving me special lessons." she (Amily) chuckled. " He calls then How Not To Get Killed lessons.

...Though drowned was just as dead as any other way of dying.

It's easy for parents to pull the strings that make one dance...after all, they are the ones who tied those strings in the first place

Honor was never taking the easy way when it was also the wrong one. Never telling a falsehood unless the truth was painful and unnecessary, or a lie was necessary to save others. Never manipulating the truth to serve only yourself. Protecting the weak and helpless; standing fast even when fear made you weak. Keeping your word.

I'm tired of having to struggle for what seems to come easily to everyone else.

How could we have been afraid of her? She was only dead. It’s the living we fear.

I have only one question, my sister and my friend,” she said, so earnestly that Kethry came out of her own fear and looked deeply into the shadowed eyes that met hers. “And that is this; which way do you want them sliced—lengthwise, or widthwise?

The dragonets found the carpenters to be even more fascinating than the furniture, and followed the poor men from pen to pen, crowding around to watch, tasting the wooden planks, trying to steal the tools. It made for an interesting day for everyone, as the boys tried to keep the dragonets away from the carpenters, and the dragonets tried to get at the carpenters, and the carpenters worked probably a great deal faster than they ever had in their lives, sure that the dragonets would go from tasting the wood to tasting them.

Well, we could have just given him a horse and sent him on his way, but... Ancaladar ate the horse.

Among the dragons, the prohibition against asking direct questions did not exist, and-as Harrier discovered immediately-dragons were even more outrageous gossips than sailors.

Then he heard a wild, high-pitched cackling that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. It wasn't sane, that laugh. In fact, it was the laughter of someone who never had more than a nodding acquaintance with sanity.

If it is stupid but it works, it isn't stupid. (a Shin'a'in saying)

Witch' is just a religion, okay? No baby-sacrificing, no Black Masses, no sending imps out to scare the dog-snot out of kids, trying to make them think they're crazy. We don't do things like that. Our number-one law is 'Have fun in this lifetime, but don't hurt anybody.'Nice little paraphrase of "An it harm none, do as ye will" if I do say so myself.

I'm not a legend or a hero, I don't slay dragons, I don't do any of the things that a real hero can. But I can make things better, one day at a time, for most of the kingdom.

Jett Gallatin expected trouble in Alsop, Texas—but not zombies.

Only a very careless father would be inclined to tell you what I'm going to tell you. I suppose I'm about to act like the disreputable uncle who everyone fears to leave the boys with because he encourages them to drink distilled spirits, stay up late, and do more than merely kiss girls." "Uh... what?" Mags replied, utterly bewildered now."I am going," Jakyr said, leaning toward Mags, his eyes dancing with laughter, "to tell you how to please a woman."Max thought for a moment his face that caught fire, because surely it couldn't burn like that without some outside help.

Peri went to the window, gesturing out at the dragons, perched and flying, everywhere. "Safe, true, but how boring! How confining! How sad! How could that compare with this? And what is safe? You were not safe on your little farm. War came to you and took all your safety away! If I am to be in this world, I want more than to be a hound upon the game board, tucked away in a corner until the jackals come and sweep all away!

It's only gossip if you repeat it. Until then, it's gathering information.