Best Janet Morris Quotes

“Godling? Demigod?” Lysis nearly howled. “You’d be beaten black and blue in Thebes, and staked out overnight for claims like that. In Sparta, the secret police would ambush you, violate you, skin you alive and use your skull for a drinking cup.”

Life to you, Riddler, and everlasting glory.

Men live, and then they die. It is the quality of the process of living which matters, that and that alone.

“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?"

For the gift of life, the only true thanks was in living fully, and facing death with honor.

Don't, boy. Draw that sword on your left hip now and everything changes -- for the worse, for you and all your brothers.

“I’m Lysis, son of Charon, son of Thebes, of the Sacred Band of Stepsons, Blessed of Harmony,”

“I survive. I survived it all then and I’ll survive the rest of it. Without your help."

"We've the new hard-steel, though why they're all so hot to pay twice the price when men're soft as clay and even wood will pierce the boldest belly, I can't say."

“Makes you wonder if the gods are always right.”

"You're talent, and we're the talent scouts."

"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.'"

"Life to you, Riddler, and everlasting glory."

Tempus wanders eternally, bringing death to whomever loves him and being spurned by whomsoever he shall love.

Valor was in Nikodemos, unquestionable, and commitment like trees to stand or night to fall.

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

"Wanting neither too much to live, nor too much to die."

In every age he had ever studied, doomsayers abounded. No millennium is attractive to the man immured in it; enough prophecies have been made in antiquity that one who desires, in any age, to take the position that apocalypse is at hand can easily defend it. He would not join that dour order; he would not worry about anything but Tempus, and the matter awaiting his attention.

“I see all sorts of things when I’m clearing my pipes.”

"Men are fools who forget what really matters while time goes by. "

"Always take responsibility for your past. It is your only collateral in life. Unless you despise yourself now, you cannot 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.'"

"You're not one to take lightly, to love of for an evening and leave of a dawn."

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

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

Everyone prepares for battle in his own way.

"Strife brings all things into being on her battlefield. This I know. I have been there many times,” says Vashanka, lord of sack and pillage. “I have died before.”

"Learn what can, and cannot, be asked from destiny.”

"Die never for a god, Nikodemos who should know better -- not your soldiers' god, nor any other."

“In this new world, this day and forever, then, we are not only Thebans – we are all Stepsons. We are all one Sacred Band. If you will have us. And mine will fight by yours, henceforth, as brothers.”

"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."

Only so much can be borne from men, so much from gods

The Fates are here because of supernal anger, celestial imbalance, and arrogance of men and gods that must be curbed.

"Your honor blinds you, Tempus, to what’s right and wrong these days."

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

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

"Don't forget, Riddler, how I love thee. Or all we shared together. Or that this sea and all other seas can lead you back to me."

"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."

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.

“Have we already earned our fate? Is our wool carded, the spindles of our days all spun round? When gods and goddesses walk disguised among men, the wise don’t celebrate. They cower. They bow their heads. If they can, they run. If they can’t, they hide. If they can’t hide, they purify themselves for trials to come.”

"It's all the same -- no good without evil, no balance...no maat. If we lose one, we lose the other. It's just life, that's all."

"I won't go live in the sea again. I want to live like a man."

"One lot apiece, one chance to undo an error or secure a fate."

Gods and politics are the tools with which the godless and unprincipled manipulate the gullible.