"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (A Civil Campaign)

"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."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Shards of Honour)

"All the geniuses I ever met were so just part of the time. To qualify, you only have to be great once, you know. Once when it matters."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Komarr)

"But pain... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?"
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Barrayar)

"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."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Memory)

"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."
— Lois McMaster Bujold

"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. "
— Lois McMaster Bujold

"'My dinner party,' Miles grated. 'It's just breaking up.' And sinking. All souls feared lost."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (A Civil Campaign)

"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."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Mirror Dance)

"Never do yourself, what you can con professionals into doing for you."
— Lois McMaster Bujold

"Money, power, sex ... and elephants."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Memory)

"If you can't be seven feet tall, be seven feet smart."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Labyrinth)

"The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Brothers in Arms)

"This is the most important thing I will ever say to you. The human mind is the ultimate testing device. You can take all the notes you want on the technical data, anything you forget you can look up again, but this must be engraved on your hearts in letters of fire. There is nothing, nothing, nothing, more important to me in the men and women I train then their absolute personal integrity. Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool metal. That’s all."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Falling Free)

"For Berry, you just be there, Whit. Be the one person in the wide green world she doesn't have to explain it to, because you were there and saw it all for yourself. Hand her a clean cloth if she cries or bleeds, and some warm thing for the pain that doubles her over. The time to hold her will come. This day isn't over yet."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Passage)

"If you make it plain you like people, it's hard for them to resist liking you back."
— Lois McMaster Bujold

"Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (A Civil Campaign)

"An honor is not diminished for being shared."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Shards of Honour)

"The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Diplomatic Immunity)

"My home is not a place, it is people."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Barrayar)

"Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not when, then how, they may endure."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (The Curse of Chalion)

"I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (The Curse of Chalion)

"If the truth doesn't save us, what does that say about us?"
— Lois McMaster Bujold

"There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul-destroying. The other way around in merely very, very irritating."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (A Civil Campaign)

"The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business."
— Lois McMaster Bujold

""Think of the glory. Think of your reputation. Think how great it'll look on your next resume."
"On my cenotaph, you mean. Nobody will be able to collect enough of my scattered atoms to bury. You going to cover my funeral expenses, son?"
"Splendidly. Banners, dancing girls, and enough beer to float your coffin to Valhalla."
- Miles coaxing Ky Tung to agree to an almost suicidal mission"
— Lois McMaster Bujold (The Vor Game)

"When the souls rise up in glory, yours shall not be shunned nor sunderered, but shall be the prize of the gods' gardens. Even your darkness shall be treasured then, and all your pain made holy."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (The Curse of Chalion)

"I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is…the higher achievement."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Mirror Dance)

"A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind."
— Lois McMaster Bujold

"One step at a time,” Vorkosigan returned grimly, “I can walk around the world. Watch me."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Barrayar)

"Some people grow into their dreams, instead of out of them."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Komarr)

""reputatia este ceea ce stiu altii despre tine, onoarea este ceea ce stii tu despre tine"."
— Lois McMaster Bujold

"If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?"
— Lois McMaster Bujold (A Civil Campaign)

"On the though a blessed silence came, an empty clarity. He took it a first for utter desolation, but desolation was a type of free fall, perpetual and without ground below. This was stillness: balanced, solid, weirdly serene. No momentum to it at all, forward or backwards or sideways.

He lay drained of tension, not moving, and content to be so. The oddly stretched moment was like a bite of eternity, eaten on the run. Was this quiet place inside something new-grown, or had he just never stumbled upon it before? How could so vast a thing lay undiscovered for so long? His breathing slowed and deepened."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Memory)

"Well, what is a blessing but a curse from another point of view?"
— Lois McMaster Bujold

"I'd storm heaven for you, if I knew where it was."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (The Curse of Chalion)

"My home is not a place, it is people."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Barrayar)

"But pain... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?"
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Barrayar)

"War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (The Vor Game)

"Gardens were meant to be seen, smelled, walked through, grubbed in. A hundred objective measurements didn't sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that.

A Civil Campaign p.322"
— Lois McMaster Bujold

"and all your pain made holy"
— Lois McMaster Bujold (The Curse of Chalion)