The collection / 63 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1950 AD

The great love is gone. There are still little loves - friend to friend, brother to sister, student to teacher. Will you deny yourself comfort at the hearthfire of a cottage because you may no longer sit by the fireplace of a palace? Will you deny yourself to those who reach out to you in hopes of warming themselves at your hearthfire?

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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02c. 1950 AD

To treat a person like a carpet, it is necessary that one do the walking, and one allow himself to be walked on.--Shin'a'in saying

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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03c. 1950 AD

If I'm walking on thin ice, I might as well dance my way across.

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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04c. 1950 AD

Fanatics can justify practically any atrocity to themselves. The more untenable their position becomes, the harder they hold to it, and the worse the things they are willing to do to support it.

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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05c. 1950 AD

There’s no such thing as `one, true way’; the only answers worth having are the ones you find for yourself; leave the world better than you found it. Love, freedom, and the chance to do some good — they’re the things worth living and dying for, and if you aren’t willing to die for the things worth living for, you might as well turn in your membership in the human race.

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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06c. 1950 AD

I'm not out to disturb anybody's faith. I happen to be happy and comfortable with a belief system that has a dual deity and operates on a lunar schedule. It suits my needs. If you happen to be happy and comfortable with a belief system that features a single masculine deity and operates on a solar schedule, fine. I don't give a fat damn. What matters is what you do, not who's name you do it in.

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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07c. 1950 AD

Give your enemy a face, If he is human, do not dehumanize him. Know him and know why he is your enemy. If your enemy is within you, understand what it is and why you are afraid. Put a face on your fear. When you understand it, and it is no longer vague and shapeless, you will find that your fear is no longer so formidable.

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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08c. 1950 AD

Some must be warriors, that others may live in peace.

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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09c. 1950 AD

The freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose.

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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10c. 1950 AD

If they projected the fact that they are dangerous any harder, there would be little puddles of "danger" on the floor around them. Look, it's "danger", don't step in it!

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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11c. 1950 AD

There’s a saying in Hardorn,” she continued. “‘You shouldn’t attempt to teach a goat to sing. It will waste your time, hurt your ears, and annoy the goat.’ I can say without fear of contradiction that the goat is getting annoyed.

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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12c. 1950 AD

Mister Cameron - I have read the unexpurgated Ovid, the love poems of Sappho, the Decameron in the original, and a great many texts in Greek and Latin histories that were not though fit for proper gentlemen to read, much less proper ladies. I know in precise detail what Caligula did to, and with, his sisters, and I can quote it to you in Latin or in my own translation if you wish. I am interested in historical truth, and truth in history is often unpleasant and distasteful to those of fine sensibility. I frankly doubt that you will produce anything to shock me.

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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13c. 1950 AD

This I think I have learned: where there is love, the form does not matter, and the gods are pleased. This I have observed: what occurs in nature, comes by the hand of nature, and if the gods did not approve, it would not be there~ Moondance k'Treva (Magic's Pawn)

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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14c. 1950 AD

You marry who you think your beloved is, and then discover who they really are over the years. It’s that discovery that makes a marriage work.

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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15c. 1950 AD

In a calm, clear voice, she suggested that the wyrsa in question could do several highly improbable, athletically difficult and possibly biologically impractical things involving its own mother, a few household implements, and a dead fish.

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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16c. 1950 AD

Sometimes, it seemed, the business of a Witch or a Godmother was not so much using magic as knowing when not to use it.

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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17c. 1950 AD

Truth and trust are the means by which civilization holds off barbarism.

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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18c. 1950 AD

Keth, power brings with it the need to make moral judgments; history proves that. You have no choice but to make those decisions.

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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19c. 1950 AD

(From the Author Note at the beginning of the book.) Dorothy L. Sayers used to say that mystery stories were the only moral fiction of the modern world--because in a mystery, you were guaranteed to see that the bad got punished, the good got rewarded and in the end all was made

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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20c. 1950 AD

I have no place in my life for someone who is sure he can do everything.

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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21c. 1950 AD

Teach what you know, regardless of when you have learned it -- teach what you learned yesterday sagely, as if you have known it all your life, and teach what you have known for decades with enthusiasm, as if you learned it only yesterday.

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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22c. 1950 AD

Ree-" Grey barked into the icy silence. "Lax!"The word spat so unexpectedly into her ear had precisely the effect Grey must have intended. It shocked Nan for a split second into a state of not-thinking, just being-Suddenly, all in an instant she and Neville were one.

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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23c. 1950 AD

Why, you mean you didn't get abducted and dragged across country purely to make us a story for us to chew over endlessly?" asked Pip, tossing his shock of tow-colored hair indignantly. "The nerve!

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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24c. 1950 AD

I think I know why you never married, Sarah.""Well, and I reckoned if I wanted something that'd come and go as he pleased, take me for granted, and ignore me when he chose, I'd get a cat. And if I wanted something I'd always have to be picking up after, getting into trouble, but slavishly devoted, I'd get a dog.

Mercedes Lackey / quote

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