Top 195 Quotes & Sayings by Janet Morris

When you give death, you give of your own life - every time.

Life was never simple, happiness never where you thought you'd left it, and right and wrong no more fixed than clouds in the sky.

Fight for life itself and everlasting freedom of the human spirit.

To take care of the world seemed, finally, a privilege rather than a burden. The Riddler had led them to life's greatest victory. They had found a home.

So well do I love you, I go to my god singing your praises. When I meet my father, I will tell him I fought beside you.

There must be a corps that will battle for righteousness, for there are endless battalions who serve unrighteousness.

I see ranks ready for battle, stretching out. Five, six horses across, ranks in formation. Endlessly.

It is hard to battle anger, for whatever it wants it pays from the soul.

These Stepsons tread where mortals don't belong, some of us think. They seek out battle high above their station. Who knows what powers may yet take them and their mystic allies to task, bring them their comeuppance?

Go carefully, child of mat, where no mercy can be had, and let your faith lead you on.

Haste breeds error; error breeds woe.

One to a customer was the rule: one body; one mind; one swing through life. - Tempus

One man, one horse, one holocaust on demand.

Everyone prepares for battle in his own way.

Gather the shards of your courage. Patch together what resolve you can. We'll find this thing - and kill it.

Tempus never left a problem for another to solve. Tempus never let the pain or difficulty of an undertaking persuade him not to pursue a resolution his heart thought was right. Tempus never gave up.

Men make their own fates - it's personal, not a matter for debate.

Then what difference does human striving make: mortal struggle, valor, pain? If you live, then live for the test of spirit, for the celebration of the heart. Live to fight on other days. Lose your beloveds one by one. And remember. Exalt the kiss of friend and horse and wind and sun, which venality cannot cheapen nor stupidity belittle.

Ask yourselves if the gods are angry, you who have seen Harmony come among us, walk among us, touch us, look kindly upon us. We are the Sacred Band of Thebes. We fight in the forefront, therefore we bleed first. We live, therefore we die.

Nothing powers hate better than embarrassment.

Gods colliding, ethos and mythos trying to combine. The Sacred Band caught up in a whirlwind not of any god's devising: he and Niko had wanted to save twenty-three pairs of fated Theban fighters. Now everything feels fated and fighting oversweeps its boundaries of time and place and plane.

Gods are nothing without their worshipers; they act on the affairs and the passions of men.

If, as you teach, the universe has no beginning and no end, why should we?

Nature has a surer plan than mortals can devise.

It was his soul's freedom that was in question. And that question was whether freedom was worth the price when it meant shirking the responsibilities of honor.

The universe forgives those who give until their hearts are aching and their spirits weak, and finds a way to renew all strength and cure all ills, in this world or the next, if a soul can just have faith.

You've been playing gods-and-witches again, that's clear.

The Riddler says you make the world better one battle at a time.

This was what men fought for, what men died for: a chance at life, and to fight on other days - the battle of your choice, of the body, or the heart, or the soul.

I'm reverent from a distance.

There must be love, and understanding, to betray. Most men haven't the wit or the honor for betrayal: not to know it when they see it; not the stomach to apprehend it as they do it. Most men, blind and dumb in their self-centeredness, don't betray: they merely disappoint.

The heavens listen to what is said on these cobbles. Laws of man and nature come together here. Here you must be firm. Here you must be true.

Be careful what you pray for.

Sometimes the cost of winning for all the right reasons is so great that spirits die and hearts grow cold.

The sun is new every day

There is no mercy in trading life for life. And certainly no righteousness. Mercy, once given, cannot be taken back.

For Harmony. A chance at life. To fight on other days.

Nothing walks the earth more savage than a mare enraged.

And personally, I've lost my thirst for vengeance.

These warriors of the Sacred Band were inscrutable; they loved their war and death and picking through the bones of time to sort out right from wrong, good from bad, holy from profane, honor from dishonor.

Gods have bloody hands.

If, as Niko asks, you show them mercy, then the gods will be well pleased.

I see all sorts of things when I'm clearing my pipes.

You get what you expect. Expect to heal. Expect victory.

Generosity is never out of season.

Listen close and you can hear, Please, bless us and forgive us, and make us good here and strong here. Let us get along here. Let those we love and left behind be blessed. Let us find the proper path and keep to it. Help us act harmoniously, and find work pleasing in the sight of god and man.

Let fools believe what fools believe.

What we hold sacred is honor, justice, and glory. You need not swear allegiance to our storm god, to serve with us. Fighters are among us from many lands, with many gods and many beliefs. Believe as you will. What is between a man and his god is theirs alone to say.

I am always yours to call, wherever the sea can reach.

Look around you. It's an honor to fight beside you. Today we choose to fight. For the freedom to fight on other days. So we remember what's worth fighting for.

When I write what publishers call 'fantasy' I am writing in what I think is the most important tradition of fiction: starting with Homer and up through Shakespeare and Milton, the most important themes to tackle are those of the mythopoeic domain, tales of the body and mind seen through a temperament and a cosmos divorced from current reality so what is said can be more clear.

I survive. I survived it all then and I'll survive the rest of it. Without your help.

Wisdom, Niko thought as he leaned his cheek against his long-handled rake, cannot be had without price. And that price is blood. The sound of it in your veins. The pound of it in your head. The volume of it in a human body; the sickness when you've spilled it.

The only unfair fight is the one you lose.

The city guardsmen were like the keres, doom-bringers of merciless vengeance.

Always take responsibility for your past. It is your only collateral in life. Unless you despise yourself now, you cannot despise yourself then. Everything you did is a part of the process that brought you here. All your past is as alive and real as your so-called 'present.'

Be polite to all, friendly to none. Be professional. Be ready to kill everyone and everything.

I think we're all in Cime's army now. But never mind, the Storm God hasn't forgotten us. Heaven is no farther away than it ever was.

This fight coming is not a battle of weapons, but a battle of wills.

You must become like yourself.