The Great Game Quotes

“There is a hand behind every curtain,' ” she quoted. “ 'And a knife in every hand,' " finished Mara.”
― Raymond E. Feist, Daughter of the Empire

“He likes to humble our foes by making them seem ridiculous. As he said to me the other day, ‘Kill a man, and you cede him honor in the eyes of the gods. Laugh at him and you shame him'.”
― Raymond E. Feist, Mistress of the Empire

“Informants can be helpful, but they are never infallible. All tools can break, or be turned into weapons.”
― Raymond E. Feist, Servant of the Empire

“Somehow it was not the fault of the born adventurers, of those who by their very nature dwelt outside society and outside all political bodies, that they found in imperialism a political game that was endless by definition; they were not supposed to know that in politics an endless game can end only in catastrophe and that political secrecy hardly ever ends in anything nobler than the vulgar duplicity of a spy. The joke on these players of the Great Game was that their employers knew what they wanted and used their passion for anonymity for ordinary spying. But this triumph of the profit-hungry investors was temporary, and they were duly cheated when a few decades later they met the player of the game of totalitarianism, a game played without ulterior motives like profit and therefore played with such murderous efficiency that it devoured even those who financed it.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“Chumaka ended with a quotation from a play that Jiro favored. “ ‘Small acts partner small houses and small minds'.”
― Raymond E. Feist, Mistress of the Empire

“Curious Oriental imagery was employed in these documents. In one of his earlier letters the thum asked why the British strayed thus into his country 'like camels without nose rings'. In another letter he declared that he cared nothing for the womanly English, as he hung upon the skirts of the manly Russians, and he warned Colonel Durand that he had given orders to his followers to bring him the Gilgit Agent's head on a platter. The thum was, indeed an excellent correspondent about this time. He used to dictate his letters to the Court Munshi, the only literary man, I believe, in the whole of his dominions, who wrote forcible, if unclassical, Persian. In one letter the thum somewhat shifted his ground, and spoke of other friends. 'I have been tributary to China for hundreds of years. Trespass into China if you dare,' he wrote to Colonel Durand. 'I will withstand you, if I have to use bullets of gold. If you venture here, be prepared to fight three nations - Hunza, China, and Russia. We will cut your head off, Colonel Durand, and then report you to the Indian Government.”
― E F Knight, WHERE THREE EMPIRES MEET: Narrative of travel in Kashmir, Western Tibet, Gilgit and other adjoining countries

“In Tsurani culture, forgiveness was simply a less shameful form of weakness than capitulation.”
― Raymond E. Feist