Honorverse favorite one-liners

Honor had felt the way the young woman braced herself, straightening metaphysical shoulders to bear up under that burden. And as she had, she’d realized that one of the reasons Rivka had been so strongly drawn to her was that Honor, too, had been born of yeoman stock. Neither of them had ever dreamed, during their childhood, of ascending to such dizzying heights, and as she’d tasted Rivka’s trepidations surging once more, she’d put an arm around the younger woman’s shoulders in a brief, comforting hug.

...wedding quite like it?”
“I doubt it,” Emily said. “In fact, I’m pretty darn sure there hasn’t been one like it since the Diaspora got everybody off Old Earth, anyway! Let’s see, we’ve got the Empress of Manticore, the President of the Republic of Haven, the Protector of Grayson, the Chairman of the Beowulf Board of Directors, Queen Berry, and the Andermani Emperor’s first cousin. Not to mention your own humble self as Steadholder Harrington and the commander of the Grand Fleet, followed by a scattering of mere planetary grand dukes, dukes, Earls, members of the Havenite cabinet, three other members of the Beowulf Board of Directors, the chairman of the Alliance joint chiefs of staff, the First Space Lord, the Havenite chief of naval operations, the Beowulfan chief of naval operations, High Admiral Yanakov, Admiral Yu, two or three dozen ambassadors, and God alone only knows who else. I’m sure there’ve been other weddings that had the same guest count or better, but bringing all of these people together in one place?”

“I wish those cretins in Old Chicago could see this,” her uncle said in a much more somber tone. She raised an eyebrow at him, and he shrugged. “They still just don’t get it. I think the true problem is that nobody outside their own little world is actually quite real to them. We’re all just inconveniently obstreperous tokens they’re moving around on a game board somewhere. All that really matters is that damned echo chamber they live in.”

“Day before yesterday," Billingsley said. "I . . . found him wandering around over near the Master Chiefs' Club. He looked like he needed a home, and he walked right up to me, and I couldn't just leave him there, Ma'am!"
"I see," Michelle said, looking into his guilelessly wide and innocent eyes. "And would it happen that this hulking menace to all mice, hamsters, chipmunks, and unwary small children has a name?"
"Yes, Ma'am. I call him 'Dicey.' ” ~ SftS

Under the circumstances, I would have preferred to test the waters a little before we committed a wall of battle to action. Better to have lost a few battlecruisers here or there than to have three or four hundred SDs blown out of space.”

“Should I assume, then, Fleet Admiral, that you’d be opposed to any additional fleet actions at this time?”
“Mr. Permanent Senior Undersecretary,” Kingsford said flatly, “any ‘additional fleet actions’ could only be one-sided massacres. Even assuming what Harrington said to Filareta in the recordings they’ve sent us represents a full statement of their capabilities, without holding any nasty tactical surprises in reserve, we simply can’t match them at this time. There probably hasn’t been this great an imbalance in combat power since the introduction of the machine-gun put an end to massed infantry assaults.”

“It’s really that bad?” he asked, curious to see how far are Kingsford would go.
“It’s probably worse than that, frankly, especially with Haven added to the equation,” the acting CNO said unflinchingly. “For all intents and purposes, the Reserve has just become several billion tons of scrap material. The superdreadnoughts we have mothballed are the wrong ships for this war, and I don’t see any way the existing hulls could be refitted to turn them into effective combatants.”

“Are you saying we should just go ahead and surrender?” he asked, deliberately putting an edge into his voice, and Kingsford shook his head.
“For better or worse, Sir, I don’t think we can. Whether we want to fight or not, we don’t have a choice after the defeats we’ve suffered. And that’s what they were, Mr. Senior Permanent Undersecretary—make no mistake about that, because nobody in the Verge will. It’s not just the Manties and Havenites we have to worry about. We’re going to have other people, other star systems, pushing to see how they can exploit the situation. We can contain a lot of that, since none of those other systems will have the kind of missiles the Manties and Haven do, but if we don’t ultimately defeat the people who’ve hurt us this badly, their example’s going to remain and we’ll be fighting smaller scale wars for decades.”

cthia wrote:

“It’s really that bad?” he asked, curious to see how far are Kingsford would go.
“It’s probably worse than that, frankly, especially with Haven added to the equation,” the acting CNO said unflinchingly. “For all intents and purposes, the Reserve has just become several billion tons of scrap material. The superdreadnoughts we have mothballed are the wrong ships for this war, and I don’t see any way the existing hulls could be refitted to turn them into effective combatants.”

Ouch, perhaps there won't be another major battle anytime soon.

cthia wrote:

“It’s really that bad?” he asked, curious to see how far are Kingsford would go.
“It’s probably worse than that, frankly, especially with Haven added to the equation,” the acting CNO said unflinchingly. “For all intents and purposes, the Reserve has just become several billion tons of scrap material. The superdreadnoughts we have mothballed are the wrong ships for this war, and I don’t see any way the existing hulls could be refitted to turn them into effective combatants.”

Ouch, perhaps there won't be another major battle anytime soon.

SWM wrote:
Yeah, now you see why we were skeptical about it before we realized you hadn't read ART.

Glad you had the chance to enjoy the book now, though!

“Are you saying we should just go ahead and surrender?” he asked, deliberately putting an edge into his voice, and Kingsford shook his head.
“For better or worse, Sir, I don’t think we can. Whether we want to fight or not, we don’t have a choice after the defeats we’ve suffered. And that’s what they were, Mr. Senior Permanent Undersecretary—make no mistake about that, because nobody in the Verge will. It’s not just the Manties and Havenites we have to worry about. We’re going to have other people, other star systems, pushing to see how they can exploit the situation. We can contain a lot of that, since none of those other systems will have the kind of missiles the Manties and Haven do, but if we don’t ultimately defeat the people who’ve hurt us this badly, their example’s going to remain and we’ll be fighting smaller scale wars for decades.”