A Civil Campaign
Lois McMaster Bujold
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.”
“Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.”
“You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one. The family economy evades calculation in the gross planetary product. It's the only deal I know where, when you give more than you get, you aren't bankrupted - but rather, vastly enriched.”
“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 is merely very, very irritating.”
“When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.”
“Too late, he recalled Miles's dictum that the reward for a job well done was usually a harder job.”
“There's something to that in both directions," said Ekaterin mildly. "Nothing is more guaranteed to make one start acting like a child than to be treated like one. It's so infuriating. It took me the longest time to figure out how to stop falling into that trap." "Yes, exactly," said Kareen eagerly. "You understand! So—how did you make them stop?" "You can't make them—whoever your particular them is—do anything, really," said Ekaterin slowly. "Adulthood isn't an award they'll give you for being a good child. You can waste . . . years, trying to get someone to give that respect to you, as though it were a sort of promotion or raise in pay. If only you do enough, if only you are good enough. No. You have to just . . . take it. Give it to yourself, I suppose. Say, I'm sorry you feel like that, and walk away. But that's hard.”
“Not that I haven't leaped up into the blinding light of competence now and then. It's sustaining the altitude that defeats me.”
“[Koudelka] looked back, "You?! I know you! You trust beyond reason!" [Cordelia] met his eyes steadily, "Yes, it's how I get results beyond hope, as you may recall.”
“If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?”
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Book Keywords:
trust, humor, reputation, parents, inspirational, mental-health, hope, marriage, honor, morals, adulthood, achievement, family, debt, vorkosigan, life, children, sci-fi, dysfunctional-families, love, economy, marriage-advice
