Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.
If you can't be seven feet tall, be seven feet smart.
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.
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.
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.
Don't wish to be normal. Wish to be yourself. To the hilt. Find out what you're best at, and develop it, and hopscotch your weaknesses. Wish to be great at whatever you are.
Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.
My home is not a place, it is people.
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.
Some people grow into their dreams, instead of out of them.
Never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake
Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.
A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind.
Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how, they may endure.
I am who I choose to be. I have always been what I chose, though not always what I pleased.
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.
The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business.
Aim high. You may still miss the target, but at least you won't shoot your foot off.
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.
The world is made by the people who show up for the job.
Never do yourself, what you can con professionals into doing for you.
It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for.
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.
The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.
The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives.
Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework: never finished.
We should have taken our chances back then, when we were young and beautiful and didn't even know it.
If you make it plain you like people, it's hard for them to resist liking you back.
One step at a time,” Vorkosigan returned grimly, “I can walk around the world. Watch me.
An honor is not diminished for being shared.
