Honorverse favorite one-liners

“Just that you’re human,” Elizabeth said quietly. Honor looked at her, and the empress shrugged, stroking Ariel’s ears as he lay across her lap. “I can read sign, too, you know. And I know you both well enough to follow the subtext.” She smiled sadly. “You’re not the only person who’s been hit hard enough to be a little illogical, either. Sometimes I think the smarter we are, the better we are at finding ways to hammer ourselves with imagined disasters ahead of time.”

“I don’t know about smarter,” Honor said, walking back across the room to the couch facing Elizabeth’s armchair. “I do think people with more imagination do a better job of putting themselves through the wringer, though.”

“All right, I’ll grant that.” Elizabeth’s smile turned mischievous. “But if I do, then you have to grant—”

cthia wrote:“All right, I’ll grant that.” Elizabeth’s smile turned mischievous. “But if I do, then you have to grant—”
What was Elizabeth going to say?
Oh how I wish I knew what she was going to say.
David???!

I want to be able to look into the mirror ten years from now and like the man I see looking back out of it at me, and if you let me do what I want to do to these motherless bastards, I wouldn't.

“I don't want to be a lawyer"
“ 'Course not. So what? You don't much want to be a housewife or a queen, either. Besides, the first one would bore you to death—you're too sensible to slobber all over babies—and, like I said, there's no opening for the second. So," Helen concluded triumphantly, finishing her plate and scooping on seconds, "lawyer it is. Process of elimination.”

Honor felt her hand press her lips, felt Hamish’s arm encircle her, felt Nimitz pressing against the back of her neck, and all she could think of was the horror of a telempath—a memory singer—actually experiencing the deaths of everyone she’d ever known and loved.

<The People know how to deal with those who would slay us,> her implacable fingers said with iron determination. <We know how to deal with those who would slay those we love. Do not forget how Death Fang’s Bane and Climbs Quickly first met. They fought, and they bled, and each almost died for the other. Now it is our turn, and we wish you to go to Soul of Steel and Truth Seeker. Tell them the People—all the People of this entire world—know who would protect them and who would slay them. We know how you and your clan have always loved and protected and shielded us from harm, Dances on Clouds. But the time has come for that to change, and we do not choose to be kittens forever. If you would guard us, then we will guard you, and if we die as Far Climber did, as Climbs Quickly almost did, as Laughs Brightly has almost died for you and you for him, then we will die. But we will not hide. We will not be children. If you will fight for all this world, for all of us, then we will fight for you.>

If I haven’t figured out anything else by now, I should at least have realized that whatever else Manties may be, they sure as hell aren’t impressed by the League’s reputation! Not anymore.

They shouldn't have sent you out with so few ships, Your Grace, he told the light code of HMS Imperator.

"Eloi—" he began, his voice soft in the hurricane of alarms and devastation.
He never finished her name.

“Once you got rid of Saint-Just and State Security, you turned up a bunch of capable COs. In some ways, though, I’d really never realized just how good you were until we finally got a look at just how bad the Sollies are!”
“Please!” Theisman grimaced in mock pain. “I’d like to think you could find someone better than that to compare us to!”