"A trooper fights for honor ... or from loyalty. Or for loot sometimes. But he waits for pay. He will not wait without it, because when there is no fighting there is no honor to win, no flag to die for, no loot to gain."

"There are people who love birds so much they free them. There are others who love them so much they cage them."

"What little I have learned in the course of a long life, regarding the gods, I have tried to forget."

"The jokes of the gods are long in the telling."

"When we're young, we notice things that are young, like ourselves. New grass on old graves. New leaves on old trees"

"Everyone who is grieved at anything, or discontented, is like a pig for sacrifice, kicking and squealing. Like a dove for sacrifice is he who laments in silence. Our one distinction is that it is given to us to consent, if we will, to the necessity imposed upon us."

"There is more to be learned from any good teacher than the subject taught."

"Action, you see, is the end that thought achieves. Action is its only purpose. What else is it good for? If we don't act, it's worthless."

"As you intend to live hereafter, it is in your power to live here."

"The best way to be thought honest is to be honest."

"Any representation of a god is ultimately a lie, Silk explained. It may be a convenient lie, and it may even be a reverent one; but it's ultimately false. ... Neither image would be more nearly true than the other, or more true than any other—merely more appropriate."

"You have need of learning, children, in order that the whorl will someday have need of you."

"The gods smile on us, my son, or so it is written. It's a wonder they don't laugh aloud."

"Men build scales, but the gods blow upon the lighter pan."

"“We can only hope.” “That’s like the frog said when he seen the stork.”"

"We never really got married. When we both wanted to we never had the money, somehow. And when we had the money, there was always some kind of quarrel. After a couple of years everybody thought we were married anyway."

"He is indeed a creature of evil; but so are you, and so am I."

"What is perceived is dictated by the instrument. If you had other eyes, or another mind, you would see all things otherwise."

"It’s easy—very easy—to slay a ruler. But it’s very difficult to prevent a worse one from coming to his place."

"“You’re called a holy man,” she said. “I see you’re wholly deranged.”"

"Until we reach the end of time, we don’t know whether something’s been good or bad; we can only judge the intentions of those who acted."

"“Yours is a race of pawns,” Tzadkiel told me. “You move forward only, unless we move you back to begin the game again. But not all the pieces on the board are pawns.”"

"“I pledged myself to show you wonders.” I drew her farther from the building. “I’m not ready to see wonders. Yours, or any other woman’s.”"

"Those who have never fought suppose that the deserter who flies the field is consumed by shame. He is not, or he would not desert; with only trifling exceptions, battles are fought by cowards afraid to run."

"The most trivial skirmish is not trivial to those who die in it, and so should not be trivial in any ultimate sense to us."

"I was the core of the universe, as we always are to ourselves."

"“You’re a poet too, aren’t you? And a good liar, I bet.” “I was the Autarch of Urth; that required a little lying, if you like. We called it diplomacy.”"

"Now I must, I suppose, explain why I have been writing this account. [...] I have written to disclose myself to myself, and I am writing now because I will, I know, sometime read what I am now writing and wonder. Perhaps by the time I do, I will have solved the mystery of myself, or perhaps I will no longer care to know the solution."

"One of the questions whose answers we seek is why we seek."

"When a tree is very old, yet still lives, sometimes the limbs are strangely twisted."

"It doesn't move because he has fastened it in place until he finds out why it doesn't move."

"A child, not knowing what is extraordinary and what is commonplace, usually lights midway between the two, finds interest in incidents adults consider beneath notice, and calmly accepts the most improbable occurrences."

""God is love" "Love is blind" If these be true, then God is blind: Simple logic would appear to have escaped the theologians. Res ipsa loquitur, love is not blind, neither God's love nor man's, though we all wish at times to escape God's eye, and though it must at times appear that the lover cannot see what we see—unless, of course, we are ourselves that lover. Like God, the lover sees but forgives."

"There is no human quality more attractive than the courage of the weak."

"People who fear death live no longer than those who don't, and live scared."

"Could he have murdered a child? He decided that he could not, but that he could certainly have been accused of having done it and worse. Anyone these days—any man, particularly—could be accused of anything by anyone."

"People who get eyeball arthritis see only what they're supposed to see, like that TV screen."

"Every theory is true in some discipline. The beauty of this is that it carries its own confirmation."

"I have never in my whole life had a fight with a smart person or even seen anybody else have one either. That is because when the fight starts the smart people are not there anymore. They have gone off someplace else, and when it is over they come back and tell you how much they did in the fight, only it is all lies."

"Legend declares that at the christening of our family’s founder a somewhat deaf fairy who had been asked to render him and his descendants mettlesome, made us meddlesome instead."

"A hundred wise men have said in various ways that love transcends the power of death, and millions of fools have supposed that they meant nothing by it. At this late hour in my life I have learned what they meant. They meant that love transcends death. They are correct."

"People who wish to be lost always get their way."

"Prince of parable, I desire to see those gardens of lasting delight which Allah—the Creator! the Ever Beneficent!—reserves for the faithful. How am I to do so if I tell lies?" "By lying to Allah, I suppose."

"He was proud, like all lonely men. Lonely men must be proud or die."

"Very small, child, are the flying days of love, and men and women must catch them when they can, if they are to know love at all."