Liveship Traders Quotes

Tomorrow owes you the sum of your yesterdays. No more than that. And no less.

Everyone thinks that courage is about facing death without flinching. But almost anyone can do that. Almost anyone can hold their breath and not scream for as long as it takes to die. True courage is about facing life without flinching. I don't mean the times when the right path is hard, but glorious at the end. I'm talking about enduring the boredom, the messiness, and the inconvenience of doing what is right.

When you fear to fail, you fear something that has not happened yet. You predict your own failure, and by inaction, lock yourself into it.

Look forward, not back. Correct your course and go on. You can't undo yesterday's journey.

That is the challenge Companion. To take what has happened to you and learn from it. Nothing is quite so destructive as pity, especially self-pity. No event in life is so terrible that one cannot rise above it.

I never confuse the cost of something with its value

For the weakest has but to try his strength to find it, and then he shall be strong.

Love isn't just about feeling sure of the other person, knowing what he would give up for you. It's knowing with certainty what you are willing to surrender for his sake. Make no mistake; each partner gives up something. Individual dreams are surrendered for a shared one.

One must plan for the future and anticipate the future without fearing the future.

One does not need the size of a dragon to have the soul of a dragon.

Do you not see how strange and wonderful that is? That all history balances on an affair of the human heart?

You're not who he expected you to be; that doesn't mean you aren't somebody. Nor are you perfect. Stop using every mistake you make as an excuse to fail completely.

Somehow," she said coldly, "you have confused profitable and not profitable for right and wrong. I, however, have not.

The wise man takes the shortest path to peace with himself.’ Acceptance of what is, that is the shortest path.

Too many folk, women and men, love the person they wish to be, as if by loving that person, or being loved by that person, they could attain the importance they long for.

What you are born to be, you will be, whether it be priest or sailor. So step up and be it. Let them do nothing to you. Be the one who shapes yourself. Be who you are, and eventually all will have to recognize who you are, whether they are willing to admit it or not.

Innocent?” He was incensed at her suggestion he was somehow responsible for this mess. “I’ve done nothing wrong, I intend nothing wrong. I am innocent!” “Half the evil in this world occurs while decent people stand by and do nothing wrong. It’s not enough to refrain from evil, Trell. People have to attempt to do right, even if they believe they cannot succeed.” “Even when it’s stupid to try?” he asked with savage sarcasm. “Especially then,” she replied sweetly. “That’s how it’s done, Trell. You break your heart against this stony world. You fling yourself at it, on the side of good, and you do not ask the cost. That’s how you do it.

Open your eyes. This horrible mess is your life. There is no sense in waiting for it to get better. Stop putting it off and live it.

Many will rant and rave against the garment fate has woven for them, but they pick it up and don it all the same, and most wear it to the end of their days. You... you would rather go naked into the storm.

Strangers had small interest in hurting you. That was always done best by your own family and friends.

When you borrow trouble against what might be, you neglect the moment you have now to enjoy. The man who worries about what will next be happening to him loses this moment in dread of the next, and poisons the next with pre-judgment.

As long as you believe it is impossible, you close your mind to understanding it.

Do you do this because you live such short lives? Tell yourselves wild tales of what might happen tomorrow, and feel all the feelings of events that will never happen? Perhaps to make up for the pasts you cannot recall, you invent futures that will not exist.

It is the nature of humans that we tend to pass our pain along. As if we could get rid of it by inflicting an equal hurt on someone else.

A manner of speaking becomes a manner of thinking.

Only my pain is more silent than my anger.

... finally realizing that life was to be lived, rather than hoarded against an unseen tomorrow.

Silent," the carved wizardwood on his wrist breathed. "Silent as a blinded ship, floating hull-up in the sea. Silent as a scream underwater.

Don't go mooning after the stars, when the wide sea is all around you. It's a sky of its own, you know.

Refuse the anxiety. When you borrow trouble against what might be, you neglect the moment you have now to enjoy. The man who worries about what will next be happening to him loses this moment in dread of the next, and poisons the next with pre-judgment.

Why can't people love one another and still remain free?" Althea demanded suddenly. Amber paused to rub her eyes, then tug thoughtfully at her earring. "One can love that way," she conceded regretfully. "But the price on that kind of love may be the highest of all." She strung her words together as carefully as she strung her beads. "To love another person like that, you have to admit that his life is as important as yours. Harder still, you have to admit to yourself that perhaps he has needs you cannot fill, and that you have tasks that will take you far away from him. It costs loneliness and longing and doubt and...

Instead, we must focus on our hopes. If we cannot anchor ourselves in a belief that we will succeed, we have already been defeated.

It doesn't work that way. Silencing memories does not make them stop existing. Events cannot be undone by forgetting them.

That’s how it’s done, Trell. You break your heart against this stony world. You fling yourself at it, on the side of good, and you do not ask the cost. That’s how you do it.

We aren't fated to survive, then at least let us fight it to the end. Let it be fate that extinguishes us, not our own lack of heart.

Do not pull back from the pain and imagine that makes you strong. Look at it, you dolt! It is trying to tell you what is wrong so you can fix it.

Once she would have found him mysterious and alluring. She had grown wiser. Dangerous men were neither romantic nor exotic; they were men who could hurt you.

No being gets to decide what his life is 'supposed to be.' ” She lifted her eyes and her gaze stabbed him. “Be a man. Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else.

I can take all my pasts, keep them and determine my own future. I don't have to be what anyone made me, Brashen. I can be Paragon.

In politics, appearance matters more than truth.

Since then, she had wondered if it were strength or a sort of madness that let her pretend she was normal.

We were speaking of people living their dreams, and I said that few do, and even fewer enjoy the experience. For too many, when they get their dream, they discover it is not what they wanted. Or the dream is bigger than their abilities, and all ends in bitterness.

You have a wild young heart. Right now, it is like a caged bird that batters itself against the bars. To struggle harder will only hurt you more. Wait, be patient. Your time will come to fly. And when it does, you must be strong, not bloodied and weary.

This terrible event – whatever it was – is over and done. Cling to it and let it shape you and you are doomed to live it forever. You are granting it power over you. Set it aside, and shape your future as you wish it to be, in spite of what happened to you. Then you have seized control of it.

The man who worries about what will next be happening to him loses this moment in dread of the next, and poisons the next with pre-judgement.

Sa'Adar's eyes went wide. "You're mad." "Scarcely. Why do people always accuse me of that when I'm arranging things to my liking instead of theirs?

Here we do not believe in wasting time simply for the purpose of impressing others.

Stop using every mistake you make as an excuse to fail completely.

There is no such thing as an extraordinary coincidence. There is only destiny.

You can't play in shit and not get some on you.

No one can have so little that someone else can find nothing to envy. Poverty and simplicity were not shields from the greed of others. If you had nothing left to steal, they'd take your body and enslave it.

You want a mate who will follow your dream. You don't want to give up your own ambitions to make someone else's life possible.' 'I supposed that's true,' Althea admitted reluctantly. An instant later she demanded, 'Why is that so wrong?' 'It isn't,' Amber assured her, A moment later she added wickedly, 'As long as you're male.

I think there is in the heart of a man a place made for wonder. It sleeps inside, awaiting fulfillment. All one’s life, one gathers treasures to fill it. Sometimes they are tiny glistening jewels: a flower blooming in the shelter of a fallen tree, the arch of a small child’s brow combined with the curve of her cheek. Sometimes, however, a trove falls into your hands all at once, as if some greedy pirate’s chest spilled before an unsuspecting beholder. Such were the dragons on the wing.

I sleep like an old woman now, she thought to herself. In fits and starts. It isn’t sleeping and it isn’t waking and it isn’t rest.

It was right, what they said: Enlightenment was merely the truth at the correct time.

Long or short, if you worry about every step of a journey, you will divide it endlessly into pieces, any one of which may defeat you. Look only to the end.

But that is not true for all folk. Some folk are meant to argue with fate. And win.

That part of your life is over. Set it aside as something you have finished. Complete or no, it is done with you. No being gets to decide what his life is "supposed to be"...'Be a man. Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else.

You earn your future, Malta Vestrit." The bead-maker cocked her head at her. "What does tomorrow owe you?" "Tomorrow owes me?" Malta repeated in confusion. "Tomorrow owes you the sum of your yesterdays. No more than that." Amber looked out to sea again. "And no less. Sometimes folk wish tomorrow did not pay them off so completely.

Do you begrudge me that I am who I truly am? Should I pretend otherwise for the sake of pleasing you? If I did, it would be a lie. Would you rather love a lie than know me as I truly am?

There was always something to be learned from any experience, no matter how horrendous. As long as a man kept sight of that, his spirit could prevail against anything. It was only when one gave in and believed the universe to be nothing more than a chaotic collection of unfortunate or cruel events that one’s spirit could be crushed.

Love isn't just about feeling sure of the other person, knowing what he would give up for you. It's knowing with certainty what you are willing to surrender for his sake. Make no mistake; each partner gives up something. Individual dreams are surrendered for a shared one. In some marriages, one partner gives up almost everything she once thought she wanted. But it's not always the woman who does so. Such sacrifice is not shameful. It's love. If you think the man is worth it, it works.

She wears a freedom ring in one ear, you know, the earring that Chalcedean freed-slaves must purchase and wear to prove they have been granted their freedom. I asked her once if she had bought her freedom, or if it had belonged to her mother. She was quiet for a time, and then said it was a gift from her one true love.

All I ever wanted to do was live my own life. And I’m having damn little success at that.” p. 250: Brashen Trell and Amber

Be now what you must be to succeed at the end of your journey, and when the end comes, you will find it is just another beginning.’ Althea

To sate your need without love is theft

Housework was comforting. In cleaning and restoring a room, one could assert control. One could even pretend, briefly, that life could be tidied the same way.

That no man can truly imagine being happy and that's why happiness isn't for sale here.

But if she let go of her anger, all that would remain was grief and pain. Anger was easier. Anger could be focused outward. Grief corroded from within.

Changes were the essence of life; one should not dread change.

If the divine is also female, and the female also divine, then she understands that woman is more than mother, more than daughter, more than wife. Those are the facets of a full life, but no single facet defines the jewel.

Such a storm of emotions as humans can evoke, all on the basis of imagination,” the dragon observed condescendingly. In a more reflective voice she asked, “Do you do this because you live such short lives? Tell yourselves wild tales of what might happen tomorrow, and feel all the feelings of events that will never happen? Perhaps to make up for the pasts you cannot recall, you invent futures that will not exist.

Who loves you or who you love is not as significant as who you are. Too many folk, women and men, love the person they wish to be, as if by loving that person, or being loved by that person, they could attain the importance they long for.

Something clamped tight inside her suddenly eased. He had been right. She did not have to grip her pain. She could let it go. The memory was still there. It had not vanished, but it had changed. It was a memory, a thing from her past. This wound could close and heal. The injury done to her was over. She did not have to keep it as a part of herself. She could allow herself to heal. Her tears were diluted in the rain that ran down her face.

The shortest distance between a man and his goal was often a lie

Humanity has become a lonely race, and dangerously arrogant in our solitude.

Tomorrow owes you the sum of your yesterdays. No more than that." Amber looked out to sea again. "And no less. Sometimes folk wish tomorrow did not pay them off so completely.

She could be shaped by her past without being trapped by it" p. 283

It was a terrible division, to feel such need for someone, and yet angry that need existed.

That most ancient of magics, the binding of a man by the use of his name, gripped him.

It is my way, to speak directly. I do not mean to give offense by it. It has always seemed to me that honest words leave the least room for misunderstanding.

It was well to impress one's enemies with a show of strength. It was even better to be sure one's friends remembered it as well.

Death could make things stop, but it could not make things right.

She is, Althea thought uneasily, what I pretend to be: a woman who does not let her sex deter her from living as she pleases.

I don't want to have these burdens. But I can't bear to turn them over to anyone else, either. Because, despite all the work, I like being in control of my own life.

if something made a man feel bad then he must determine what about it troubled him, and eliminate that. Simply to suffer the discomforts of guilt did not indicate a man had improved himself, only that he suspected he harbored a fault.

Be content with you own life, my friend, and live it well. Let others decide for themselves what path they will follow.' She frowned up at him. 'Even when you see, with absolute clarity, that is wrong for them? That they hurt themselves?' 'Perhaps people have a right to their pain,' he hazarded. Reluctantly he added, 'Perhaps they even need it.

I can see that you go through life athwart it. You see the flow of events, you are able to tell how you could most easily fit yourself into it. But you dare to oppose it. And why? Simply because you look at it and say, 'this fate does not suit me. I will not allow it to befall me.'" Amber shook her head, but her small smile made it an affirmation. "I have always admired people who can do that. So few do. Many, of course, will rant and rave against the garment fate has woven for them, but they pick it up and on it all the same, and most wear it to the end of their days. You... you would rather go naked into the storm.

Be a man. Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else.

Fate rushes down upon us! The time drags and the days plod past, lulling us into thinking that the doom we fear will always so delay. Then, abruptly, the dark days we have all predicted are upon us, and the time when we could have turned dire fate aside has passed. How old must I be before I learn? There is no time; there is never any time. Tomorrow may never come, but todays are linked inexorably in a chain, and now is always the only time we have to divert disaster.

I don't think I can stand it much longer,” he warned her. “Something will have to give way. And I fear it will be me… I've just been living from day to day. Waiting for something or someone else to change the situation… I think I need to make a real decision. I believe I need to take action on my own.

Half the evil in this world occurs while decent people stand by and do nothing wrong. It’s not enough to refrain from evil, Trell. People have to attempt to do right, even if they believe they cannot succeed.” “Even when it’s stupid to try?” he asked with savage sarcasm. “Especially then,” she replied sweetly. “That’s how it’s done, Trell. You break your heart against this stony world. You fling yourself at it, on the side of good, and you do not ask the cost. That’s how you do it.

Why not break free now, and make Bingtown a place where folk begin anew, all men standing on an equal footing?" "And all women, too." She must be Sparse's daughter, thought Keffria. Even her voice echoed his in tone. Devouchet looked at her in surprise. "It was but a manner of speaking, Ekke," he said mildly. "A manner of speaking becomes a manner of thinking.

How can one hate oneself so much that one is willing to murder that self?' The ship shook his head and rain flew from his locks. 'That is your mistake. No one wants the self to die. I only wanted to make all the rest of it to stop. The only way to achieve that was to put death between the world and myself.

You can’t go back,” she told him bluntly. Her voice was neither kind nor unkind. “That part of your life is over. Set it aside as something you have finished. Complete or no, it is done with you. No being gets to decide what his life is ‘supposed to be.’” She lifted her eyes and her gaze stabbed him. “Be a man. Discover who you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting that this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else.” p. 114 Etta to Wintrow

She turned to look at Althea with eyes the color if brandy in firelight. "Can't you feel it?" she asked her in a whisper. "Look around you. We are on the cusp. We are a coin spinning in the toss, a card fluttering in the flip, a rune chip floating in stirred water. Possibilities swarm like bees. In this day, in a moment, in a breath, the future of the world will shift course by a notch, One way or another, the coin will land ringing, the card will settle to the table, the chip will bob to the surface, The face that shows uppermost will set our days, and children to come will say, "That is just the way it has always been.

It’s all a trick,’ he observed. ‘All a rotten trick men play on themselves. They get together and they create this beautiful thing and then they stand back and say, “See, we have souls and insight and holiness and joy. We put it all in this building so we don’t have to bother with it in our everyday lives. We can live as stupidly and brutally as we wish, and stamp down any inclination to spirituality or mysticism that we see in our neighbours or ourselves. Having set it in stone, we don’t have to bother with it any more.” It’s a trick men play on themselves. Just one more way we cheat ourselves.

Why’re you like that?” the boy persisted. “Like what?” Paragon finally asked in annoyance. “Ya’know. Allus mad. Or crazy fightin’ Say’n stuff ta be mean.” “How else do you expect me to be?” Paragon retorted. “Joyous that they’ve dragged me out here? All excited to go off on a hare-brained rescue mission with them?” He felt the boy’s shrug. “Ya could be.” “I could be?” Paragon snorted. “I’d like to know how.” “S’easy. Ya decide t’be.” “You decide to be happy? I should just forget everything that has been done to me, and be happy? Tra-la-la-la? Like that.” “Ya could.” He heard the boy’s nails against his scalp. “Lookit me. I coulda hated everyone o’ ‘em. I decided t’be happy. Decided ta take what I could get. Make a life outer it.” A pause. “S’not like I’m gonna get another life. Gotta make this’n work.” “It’s not that simple,” Paragon snapped. “Could be,” Cliff insisted. “In’t no harder than decidin’t’be mad allus.” The boy sauntered away slowly. His bare feet scuffed lightly on the deck. “But it’s a lot funner,” he called back over his shoulder. p. 406: Clef to Paragon

So. I should just give up now?" she asked mildly. "Just let him spiral down into madness until the New Traders come to haul him away and chop him up? What will we say to one another afterwards, Brashen? That there was nothing we could do, that we never believed it would really happen. Will that make us innocent?" "Innocent?" He was incensed at her suggestion he was somehow responsible for this mess. "I've done nothing wrong, I intend nothing wrong. I am innocent!" "Half the evil in this world occurs while decent people stand by and do nothing wrong. It's not enough to refrain from evil, Trell. People have to attempt to do right, even if they believe they cannot succeed." "Even when it's stupid to try?" he asked with savage sarcasm. "Especially then," she replied sweetly. "That's how it's done, Trell. You break your heart against this stony world. You fling yourself at it, on the side of good, and you do not ask the cost. That's how you do it.

So. Which of our troubles torments you most this evening?” Althea surrendered. “They all nip at my heels like a pack of yapping feists, ship. I don’t know which to worry about first.” The figurehead gave a snort of disdain. “Then kick them away as if they were truly a pack of curs and fix your gaze instead on your destiny.” … “Don’t think about the obstacles” … The ship spoke in a low, soft voice. “Long or short, if you worry about every step of a journey, you will divide it endlessly into pieces, any one of which may defeat you. Look only to the end.” “I think we will succeed only if we prepare ourselves,” Althea objected. Paragon shook his head. “Teach yourself to believe you will succeed. … Be now what you must be to succeed at the end of your journey, and when the end comes, you will find it is just another beginning.” Althea sighed. “Now you sound like Amber,” she complained. “No.” He contradicted her flatly. “Now I sound like myself. The self I put aside and hid, the self I intended to be again someday, when I was ready. I have stopped intending. I am, now.” p. 86: Paragon to Althea