“Do you see how much power you have when you act without fear?”

“Taking away men's weapons will be not bring peace. They'll fight with sticks and stones, and tooth and nail. Mapidr's is a peace supported only by fear, as secure as a nest built on a rotten branch.”

“There is far more happiness in a life that is your own than a life in which you are handed the lines to say and shown the gestures to make. Do not ever be ambitious.”

“I thought my duty was to restore Haan, but Haan is not King Cosugi or the burned-down palace or the ruins of the great estates or the dead nobles and their descendants pining for glory-these are bu...”

“I have seen the poor suffer when nobles seek the purity of ideals. I have seen the powerless die when princes believe in the nostalgia of their dreams. I have seen the common people torn from peace...”

“He intrigued her. Powerful men, in her experience, were usually not so full of doubt. Kuni was consumed by the desire to do good for others, but uncertain what "good" might be and whether he was th...”

“If a man does not work passionately - even furiously - at being the best in the world at what he does, he fails his talent, his destiny, and his God.”

“I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prov...”

“Not everything you're good at is what you're called to do.”

“And this fine young prince had fallen in love with a Nobody from Nowhere -- as princes sometimes do, though not as often as romantic tradition would have you believe.”