Devotion to duty, or pragmatic ruthlessness, which was which? He would never know, now. - Lois McMaster Bujold

Aim high. You may still miss the target, but at least you won't shoot your foot off.

“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.”
“What do you find on the other side? When you go on?”
She shrugged. “Your life again. What else?”
“Is that a promise?”
She picked up a pebble, fingered it, and tossed it into the water. The moon-lines bloomed and danced. “It’s an inevitability. No trick. No choice. You just go on.”

A three-planet empire delivered upset snakes by the basket-load to this man’s office, every damned morning. Yeah—for all the talk of men coveting the emperor’s throne, Ivan had never yet heard anyone speak of coveting his desk.