Quotes from S.M. Stirling

Is maith an scáthán súil charad!" Juniper replied ruefully. "A friend's eye is a good mirror!

His grandmother had said to him once, smiling slightly, that if you compelled people to behave as if they believed something eventually all but the strongest-willed really did start to believe it, because it was easier on their pride than admitting every moment in the privacy of their soul that they were pretending.

Luz nodded back with equal gravity, thinking for a moment of the Lion of Chaeronea sitting its long watch over the bones of the Sacred Band of Thebes, where they had stood to meet the charge of Alexander the Great and won the hero's privilege of a common grave. Stood, and died in their tracks to the last man—to the last pair of erastês and erômenos, lover and beloved, their locked shields facing the Macedonian lances side by side.

Mounted infantry can't force each other to fight, because the other side can just trot off. But we can make him fight, because we don't have to stop and get off our horses to shoot.

pedal cars, so it went quickly. I was at my Order?s new chapter house on our mission farm at Drumheller, and I carried it on snowshoes and skis over the mountain passes and down to Barony Vernon in the Okanogan country. Then by horse and rail to the Columbia and Portland. I came all the way myself rather than handing

The story never ends, but our part in the tale does, for a while, and I'm in the mood for some happy-ever-aftering! We earned it, as the Gods themselves know!

It was good to have subordinates who didn't need their t's crossed and the i's dotted . p.173

Even God knew mortality and change when He became flesh in this fallen world, and we must remain supple before time's gales.

This plan may be bungled into wreck by fools . The Skaga shaman , p 266 .

Come to me, Lord and Lady Heal this spirit, heal this soul Come to me, Lord and Lady Mind and body shall be whole! Beast of the burning sunlight Sear this wound that pain may cease Mistress of the silver moonlight Hold us fast and bring us peace— Come to me, Lord and Lady Mind and body shall be whole!

Not a lad anymore; old flesh doesn't heal like young. Learn to like it; when you're hurting, you're not dead.

being crazy is a job qualification.

Lay on, MacDuff Lay on with the soup, and the Haggis and stuff; For though 'tis said you are our foe What side my bread's buttered on you bet I know!

though. Here, besides books like Langer's Grow It!, Livingston's Guide to Edible Plants and Animals, Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living and of course Seymour's Forgotten Arts and Crafts—their

the swift daring strength of his youth and the steady hand of his ripe manhood we have had, but the wisdom of his deep age is taken from us and that we will never have, spilled with the blood he shed for us! Mourn, then, mourn! For he is lost and gone and we will send him to the sky and the earth and the sea.

like biting down on copper foil.

He wasn't afraid a pipe now and then would kill him. As far as he could tell, a lot of the old Americans had been quivering daisies who thought they'd live forever if only they were careful enough, as if life was worth living that way. Some of them had believed eating butter was bad for you, of all things.

What was it Da said? Órlaith thought grimly. Yes, that it's a great pity that fighting evil starts with killing evil's conscripted farmers.

Peace to the sky Sky to the earth Earth beneath sky Strength in all.

To take life was to understand your own death--that the Hour of the Huntsman also came for you.

Now let's move on to the subject of how a real man treats his wife. A real man doesn't slap even a ten-dollar hooker around, if he's got any self respect, much less hurt his own woman. Much less ten times over the mother of his kids. A real man busts his ass to feed his family, fights for them if he has to, dies for them if he has to. And he treats his wife with respect every day of his life, treats her like a queen - the queen of the home she makes for their children.

And the first king was a lucky soldier.

Strange, isn't it, that it's always more difficult to talk people out of killing each other than into it?

It is easy to kill. It is equally easy to destroy glass windows. Any fool can do either. Why is it only the wise who perceive that it is wisdom to let live, when even lunatics can sometimes understand that it is better to open a window than to smash the glass?