Quote #117

Tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune.

More from Lois McMaster Bujold

  1. Why shouldn't a madman dream of being sane?
  2. An honor is not diminished for being shared.
  3. A price is something you get. A cost is something you lose.
  4. Don't be afraid. The dead cannot hurt you. They give you no pain, except that of seeing your own death in their faces. And one can face tha…
  5. I'm sorry. I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you.
  6. The good face pain. But the great--they embrace it.
  7. The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lu…
  8. Exile, for no other motive than ease, would be the last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it.

All Lois McMaster Bujold quotes