I do not know that the Chinese system is any worse; there is a limit to the evil one despot alone can do, and if he is truly vicious he can be overthrown; a hundred corrupt members of Parliament may t...
He’d also agreed to be betrothed to the Archduke of Varsha’s daughter, a girl of nine who had evidently impressed him a great deal by being able to spit across a garden plot. I was a little dubious ab...
He could not help a certain resentment that a conscience seemed to be so very expensive, and yet had no substantial form which one might admire, and display to one’s company.
He coiled himself neatly and waited without fidgeting, as was polite; but at length, when Majestatis showed no signs of waking—after ten minutes, or perhaps five—very nearly five—Temeraire coughed; th...
Do none of you ever ?' I asked, baffled.'And how do keep from getting all over mud? she said.We both looked down. I was a good two inches deep in mud along all the bottom of today's skirt: bigger aro...
De Draak keerde zich weer naar me om. 'Je bent er dus in geslaagd manschappen hierheen te halen,' merkte hij sarcastisch op.
Darby, sir, but Janus they call me, the seaman said, on account of a surgeon we shipped in the , a learned bloke, saying I saw both ways like some old Roman cut-up by that name.
But the world I wanted wasn't the world I lived in, and if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thing at once, I would do nothing forever.
But I realized now that without quite thinking it through, I'd half-imagined myself a place here in the tower. My little room upstairs, a cheerful rummaging through the laboratory and the library, tor...
Anger was a fire in a grate, and I'd never had any wood to burn. Until now, it seemed.
And to crown the whole, you must needs come back and make a martyr of yourself, so now anyone who cares a farthing for your life must watch you hanged; that is, if they do not decide to make a spectac...
And then finally the magic flowed, but not the same way as when the Dragon’s spell-lessons dragged it in a rush out of me. Instead it seemed to me the sound of the chanting became a stream made to car...
And on the wedding contract, before me and my parents and the rabbi, and Wanda and Sergey for our witnesses, in silver ink he signed his name.But I won't ever tell you what it is.
And I wasn’t old enough to be wise, so I loved her more, not less, because I knew she would be taken from me soon. She
And I wasn't old enough to be wise, so I loved her more, not less, because I knew she would be taken from me soon.
All those stories must have ended this same way, with someone tired going home from a field full of death, but no one ever sang this part.
He would not neglect what he considered his duty for the sake of being liked.
As if truth didn’t mean anything without someone to share it with; you could shout truth into the air forever, and spend your life doing it, if someone didn’t come and listen.
I missed home like the ache of hunger, something in me left empty. I’d missed it every day since we crossed out of the valley, going over the mountains. Roots—yes. There were roots in my heart, as dee...
I had roots, too, but not like that. I could be carefully dug up, and shaken loose, and transplanted into a king's castle, or a tower built of marble—unhappily, perhaps, but I could survive.