

“Look at Tain Shir and you cannot fathom the name behind the cartouche. You cannot extract her reasons. You only see why men turn to religion: for hope that there are gods to oppose her.”
― The Monster Baru Cormorant
― The Monster Baru Cormorant

“Let him kill himself,â€� I said finally. “As long as he is dead, that is all that matters to me.â€� That’s something I think peasants understand better than nobles. For them, the way down matters, whether you are skewered by a dozen guardsmen or thrown in a silk sack to drown or allowed to remove your robe and walk down to the shores of the lake before you gut yourself. Peasants understand that dead is dead.”
― The Empress of Salt and Fortune
― The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“The Hierarchic Qualm: The sword kills. But the arm moves the sword. Is the arm to blame for murder? No. The mind moves the arm. Is the mind to blame? No. The mind has sworn an oath to duty, and that duty moves the mind, as written by the Throne. So it is that a servant of the Throne is blameless.”
― The Traitor Baru Cormorant
― The Traitor Baru Cormorant

“Baru was Farrier's monument, his exemplar, his masterpiece. A degenerate child molded into a brilliant Imperial agent. A tribadist who, even when dispatched into rebel woods to consort with warrior duchesses, enforced her own chastity until the night before the end. A traitor who would voluntarily return to Falcrest, to her own repression and to Farrier's control. Because she believed she was a savant, a hard woman, someone who sacrificed what she must in order to do what was necessary. Someone who *had* to be alone.
Behold the chains he placed on you.
His law lived in Baru. Everything she accomplished was tainted by it.
If I show you favor, woman, then you will die.
And through that death I will progress.
She wore an invisible mask: the laughing face of Cairdine Farrier, carved into the skull of her soul.”
― The Tyrant Baru Cormorant
Behold the chains he placed on you.
His law lived in Baru. Everything she accomplished was tainted by it.
If I show you favor, woman, then you will die.
And through that death I will progress.
She wore an invisible mask: the laughing face of Cairdine Farrier, carved into the skull of her soul.”
― The Tyrant Baru Cormorant

“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.
I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.”
― Persuasion
I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.”
― Persuasion
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