AoC

“Some people - even some otherwise cultured people - still thought of everything before Muhammad’s day as part of the Jahiliyah, the time of ignorance. How anyone could look at the remains of the Colosseum and reckon the Romans ignorant was beyond Khalid. You had to keep a sense of history, a sense of proportion. Didn’t you?”
― Harry Turtledove, Through Darkest Europe

“Those who survive in this business develop an intuition for when to argue and when not to argue. Smart guys have figured out that you don’t talk back to stormwardens, warlocks, sorcerers, and witches. The place for reservations is tucked neatly behind the teeth.”
― Glen Cook, Bitter Gold Hearts

“This had been a place of death, not only of men, but also of their ambitions, their dreams, all that they had fashioned. If any earth-tied spirits existed, where better could one hear their broken whispering, their pleas for life, their fear of a death that had come in such terror that their own minds could not conceive its vast blotting out of their world?”
― Andre Norton, No Night Without Stars

“Stupid storm, stupid cows, stupid mattress, stupid cart. Stupidest of all, the people who built doorways too narrow for carts to get through them.”
― Elizabeth Moon, Remnant Population