There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else. - Lois McMaster Bujold

Any man can be kind when he is comfortable. I'd always thought kindness a trivial virtue therefore. But when we were hungry, thirsty, sick, frightened, with our deaths shouting at us, in the heart of horror, you were still as unfailingly courteous as a gentleman at his ease before his own hearth.'

'Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how they may endure.'

-Bergon and Cazaril talking over the past

Reform is resisted by everyone who has an interest in it not taking place at their expense.

He said that permitting private judgments to turn my duty in the smallest matter would be just like getting a little bit pregnant — that the consequences would very soon get beyond me.