“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.”

“When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.”

“[Koudelka] looked back, "You?! I know you! You trust beyond reason!"[Cordelia] met his eyes steadily, "Yes, it's how I get results beyond hope, as you may recall.”

“Think of the glory. Think of your reputation. Think how great it'll look on your next resume."On my cenotaph, you mean. Nobody will be able to collect enough of my scattered atoms to bury. You goin...”

“Women shouldn't be in combat," said Vorkosigan, grimly glum. "Neither should men, in my opinion.”

“But though youd never starve your body to wasting and still expect to go on, you starve your heart, yet act as though you can still draw on it forever without the debt ever coming due. If you fallw...”

“No man needs sympathy because he has to work, because he has a burden to carry. Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”

“All my life I've been surrounded by people who are smarter than I am, but I found I could always keep up by working hard.”

“Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven't got even that much, however loveless and boring--this is one of the harshest human miseries.”

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.”

“If your workplace was somehow transplanted into the jungle and everyone was forced to survive at a very primitive level, it's safe to say that eventually your boss would rape you.”

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”

“If I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and t...”

“I'm an Earth ecstatic, and my creed is simple: All life is sacred, life loves life, and we are capable of improving our behavior toward one another. As basic as that is, for me it's also tonic and ...”