Poets speak of hope in ladies smiles, but give me a smirk any day, I say.

My dinner party,' Miles grated. 'It's just breaking up.' And sinking. All souls feared lost.

I am not a fate worse than death, dammit!

I'd storm heaven for you, if I knew where it was.

Do it for yourself. The universe will be around to collect its cut later.

[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.

Lately I have come to believe that the principle difference between Heaven and Hell is the company you keep there....

Miles is... Miles; close to a force of nature, climbing up out of his own pages and escaping subordination to any opinion of mine.

The good face pain. But the great? They embrace it.

I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is…the higher achievement.

Yes," Vorkosigan agreed, "I could take over the universe with this army if I could ever get all their weapons pointed in the same direction.

Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.

Bleeding ulcers run in my family, we give them to each other.

Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible.

It was hell to be so tired, and still care.

One foot in front of the other, wasn't that the grownup way of solving problems? Surely he ought to be a grownup at his age.

A true Vor, Miles told himself severely, does not bury his face in his liegewoman's breasts and cry--even if he is at a convenient height for it.

When the souls rise up in glory, yours shall not be shunned nor sunderered, but shall be the prize of the gods' gardens. Even your darkness shall be treasured then, and all your pain made holy.

What you are is a question only you can answer.

Hunting hawks did not belong in cages, no matter how much a man coveted their grace, no matter how golden the bars. They were far more beautiful soaring free. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.

But when he’s cut, I bleed.

Anything worth achieving is worth overachieving.

I wanted to give you a victory. But by their essential nature triumphs can’t be given.

It's an ancient and honorable term for the final step in any engineering project. Turn it on, see if it smokes.

The fourth approved approach for the problem of frontally attacking a guarded wormhole was to shoot the officer who suggested it.

And this was your friend?" Cordelia raised her eyebrows. "Seems to me the only difference between your friends and your enemies is how long the stand around chatting before they shoot you.

Forward momentum only worked as a strategy if one had correctly identified which way was forward.

You go on. You just go on. There's nothing more to it, and there's no trick to make it easier. You just go on.

He's not too short. He's just... concentrated.

History does not so much repeat as echo, I suppose.

Change is possible.' 'Change is inevitable.

People give themselves to you, in their talking, and in other ways, if you are quiet and patient and let them, and not in such a damned rush to give yourself to them you go bat-blind and deaf.

Never underestimate the human capacity for wishful thinking and willful blindness,' said Miles. Such as a whole society of people who became so wrapped up in avoiding death, they forgot to be alive?

Never underestimate the human capacity for wishful thinking and willful blindness,' said Miles. Such as a whole society of people who became so wrapped up in avoiding death, they forgot to be alive?

Miles added it to his life's lessons list. Call it Rule 27B. Never make key tactical decisions while having electro-convulsive seizures.

All true wealth is biological (Aral Vorkosigan)

I don’t duel, boy. I kill as a soldier kills, which is as a butcher kills, as quickly, efficiently, and with as least risk to myself as I can arrange.

…the trouble with oaths of the form, death before dishonor, is that eventually, given enough time and abrasion, they separate the world into two sorts of people: the dead, and the forsworn.

For a while, I thought I was going mad. At last, I became reconciled to my despair. The medications helped, too, I thought, sir.

It’s not that I’m not upset; it’s just that I’m too tired to run up and down the corridor screaming.

Stupidity can be as bad as malice

I miss it every minute, and I have no wish at all to go back.

I wonder if we should add a box to tick off -- Reason for travel: creepy planetary conquest... no, I suppose not.

He was shaken by an unwelcome insight. Lives did not add as integers. They added as infinities.

Gardens were meant to be seen, smelled, walked through, grubbed in. A hundred objective measurements didn't sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that.

Colonel Otto, do you have a, perhaps, fuller and more detailed account than your preliminary one of why my Imperial Security building is now largely an underground installation? From a technical perspective.

Colonel Otto, do you have a, perhaps, fuller and more detailed account than your preliminary one of why my Imperial Security building is now largely an underground installation? From a technical perspective.

The most important thing about quests, he decided, was not in finding what you went looking for, but in finding what you never could have imagined before you ventured forth.