“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...”

“Some people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said."Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway.”

“I think if I've learned anything about friendship, it's to hang in, stay connected, fight for them, and let them fight for you. Don't walk away, don't be distracted, don't be too busy or tired, don...”

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

“The sight of a worm excites my reverence more than all the gods men have invented.”

“For the natural polytheist, whose gods arise in and from the natural material world ... Our gods not only have transcendent eyes and metaphysical hands. They have antlers and feathers, hooves and s...”

“I sing to you of many more gods, gods of wind and water, gods of each mineral and the events that created them. I sing to you of the gods of protons, of quarks, of atomic forces binding and holding...”