The Deed of Paksenarrion Quotes

“Even if a tamed wolf makes a good sheepdog, he will never understand how the sheep feel....You are most fortunate. For having been, as you thought, a coward, and helpless to fight - you know what that is like. You know what bitterness that feeling breeds - you know in your own heart what kind of evil it brings. And so you are most fit to fight it where it occurs.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“We do not argue that war is better than peace; we are not so stupid as that. But it is not peace when cruelty reigns, when stronger men steal from farmers and craftworkers, when the child can be enslaved or the old thrown out to starve, and no one lifts a hand. That is not peace: that is conquest, and evil.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“You have fought a hard battle, in hard conditions, and held a position until help came. Think of it like that.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“And this, she saw, her dream had done. She had built against that fear a vision of power not wholly selfish—power to protect not only herself, but others. And that vision—however partial it had been in those days—was worth following. For it led not away from the fear, as a dream of rule might do, but back into it. The pattern of her life—as she saw it then, clear and far away and painted in bright colors—the pattern of her life was like an intricate song, or the way the Kuakgan talked of the grove's interlacing trees. There below were the dream's roots, tangled in fear and despair, nourished in the death of friends, the bones of the strong, the blood of the living, and there high above were the dream's images, bright in the sun like banners or the flowering trees of spring. And to be that banner, or that flowering branch, meant being nourished by the same fears: meant encompassing them, not rejecting them.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“Yet powerful as they were, as powerful as music that brings heart-piercing pain, tears, laughter, with its enchantments, they were as music, subordinate to their own creator. Humans need not, Paks saw, worship their immortality, their cool wisdom, their knowledge of the taig, their ability to repattern mortal perceptions. In brief mortal lives humans met challenges no elf could meet, learned strategies no elf could master, chose evil or good more direct and dangerous than elf could perceive. Humans were shaped for conflict, as elves for harmony; each needed the other's balance of wisdom, but must cleave to its own nature. It was easy for an immortal to counsel patience, withdrawal until a danger passed . . .”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“Paks, if you've got a fault it's that you're too willing to be ruled. I know what you'll say—you'll say that's how a good soldier is.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“Of death I am as certain as any mortal, Ammerlin, but defeat is certain only in despair.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“The things that were so bad, that hurt so. If I forget them, if I forget such things still happen, how can I help others? My scars prove that I know myself what others suffer.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“The quietness spread, from gray eyes that held no hatred for those who spat at her face or tasted her blood, from a voice that could scream in pain yet mouth no curses after, that spoke, between screams, in a steady confirmation of all good. Those”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“You'll find, someday," Paks found herself saying, "that your own tongue cuts you worse than any blade. I”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“it is much the same, I daresay, wherever and whenever men desire power and the use of power on others.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“When—notice that I do not say if, being granted almost as much stubbornness as you, by Gird's grace—when you find that you can swear your honor to Gird's fellowship, it will be my pleasure to give and receive your strokes. Is that satisfactory, or have you more conditions for a Marshal-General of Gird, and Captain-Temporal of the High Lord?" Paks”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“Don't fear trouble—be ready for it.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“Courage is not something you have, like a sum of money, more or less in a pouch—it cannot be lost, like money spilling out. Courage is inherent in all creatures; it is the quality that keeps them alive, because they endure. It is courage, Paksenarrion, that splits the acorn and sends the rootlet down into soil to search for sustenance. You can damage the creature, yes, and it may die of it, but as long as it lives and endures, each living part has as much courage as it can hold.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“And however your life goes, Paksenarrion, it cannot return to past times: you will never be just as you were. What has hurt you will leave scars. But as a tree that is hacked and torn, if it lives, will be the same tree - will be an oak if an oak it was before - so you are still Paksenarrion. All your past is within you, good and bad alike.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“Courage is inherent in all creatures; it is the quality that keeps them alive, because they endure.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“I’m not saying Barra’s bad, exactly, but I am saying you think she’s good at heart because you like her and want her to be good at heart. It doesn’t work that way. If you don’t learn to see people as they are, you’ll get hurt someday.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“It’s possible to like bad people, but liking them doesn’t make them good.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“Esceriel”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“Best stick to sword fighting, then"

"I'd rather, really. But [Ian] says -- "

"I know what [Ian] says. Everyone should learn every conceivable weapon and unarmed combat, in case you lose your axe, sword, dagger, pike, spear, mace, bow, crossbow...”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“Of death I am as certain as any mortal, Ammerlin, but defeat is certain only in despair. And I have been well taught that in the worst of times despair is still the work of evil.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“Not free of pain, nor free of fear, but free of the need to react to that fear in all the old ways. She had no anger left, no hatred, no desire for vengeance, nothing but pity for those who must find such vile amusements, who had no better hope, or no courage to withdraw.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“I know that the delight in battle, what we soldiers think of as courage, is not essential, even to a soldier. I need not call up anger any more—and the anger I called, in Kolobia, opened the way for Achrya's evil. I know that I can, if I but ask the gods, know what is right, and do it.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“But if we consider whether you will stay as you are now, we must consider what you are now, and what you wish to be. We must see clearly. We must have done with daydreams, and see whether this sapling—" he touched her arm, "—be oak, holly, ash or cherry. We can grow no cherries on an oak, nor acorns on a holly. And however your life goes, Paksenarrion, it cannot return to past times: you will never be just as you were. What has hurt you will leave scars. But as a tree that is hacked and torn, if it lives, will be the same tree—will be an oak if an oak it was before—so you are still Paksenarrion. All your past is within you, good and bad alike.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion