25
" You were kind.”
Cazaril shrugged. “Why not? What could it cost me, after all?”
Bergon shook his head. “Any man can be kind when he is comfortable. I’d always thought kindness a trivial virtue, therefore. But when we were hungry, thirsty, sick, frightened, with our deaths shouting at us, in the heart of horror, you were still as unfailingly courteous as a gentleman at his ease before his own hearth.”
“Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice—if not whether, then how, they may endure. "
― Lois McMaster Bujold , The Curse of Chalion (World of the Five Gods, #1)
36
" We lords, at our oars, then? We sweating, pissing, swearing, grunting gentlemen? I think not, Palli. On the galleys we were not lords or men. We were men or animals, and which proved which had no relation I ever saw to birth or blood. The greatest soul I ever met there had been a tanner, and I would kiss his feet right now with joy to learn he yet lived. We slaves, we lords, we fools, we men and women, we mortals, we toys of the gods—all the same thing, Palli. They are all the same to me now. "
― Lois McMaster Bujold , The Curse of Chalion (World of the Five Gods, #1)