Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1)

by Ada Palmer

There is no more shame in reusing such a rich inheritance than in knowing other kings’ hands held this sword before you drew it from the stone.

there is nothing female about a creature to whom the body is no more than the mind’s imperfect interface,

by the standards of the era which sculpted him from childhood, the woman Dominic Seneschal is the boldest and most masculine of men.

Worse, this so-called nation dares, not merely to ask, but to compel these free people to send their children to fight and die for a group of men they do not call leaders, against a foe they do not call enemy, over a patch of ground they have never called home.

by now its matchless popularity would have doomed us to that dread death-knell of peace: majority.

Man is more ambitious than patient. When we realize we cannot split a true atom, cannot conquer the whole Earth, we redefine the terms to fake our victory, check off our boxes and pretend the deed is done.

“If history is written by winners, fiction like that is written by bystanders trying to guess what the victims would have said if they’d survived.”

as March’s lion turned to lamb, some hope-green sprouts were peeking from old branches, like stubborn stars piercing a foggy night.

it is a strong deterrent knowing you have no armor in this wide world but the goodwill of peers who could kill you where you stand.

I saw her once when someone threatened her little nephew, and the primal savagery with which those thick hands shattered the offender was unmistakably that legendary strength which lionesses, she-wolves, she-bats, she-doves, and all other ‘she’s obtain when motherhood berserks them. That strength wins her ‘she.’

‘Observe, Chagatai, the protagonist of every work of fiction is Humanity, and the antagonist is God.’”

The face that stared back at the new arrivals was a painting, the precise, stylized ideal which stares from every flattering portrait that ever graced a palace wall in the age when men’s portraits showed distinct features and character, but ladies were homogenized into one doll-perfect face.

Everyone can listen to an everyman.

Sade warns that he who would use Reason as a key to open one door opens many, and he who would make Reason a scythe to fell injustices must beware what else the blade might cut.

children and sages both grow more stubborn when they know they’re right. Jehovah

Animals may hunt by speed, by trap, by disguise, by ambush, but name for me another besides mankind that hunts by trust.