Top 40 Julie C. Dao Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “All my life, I’ve thought myself weaker than others. But everyone has to work at being brave, don’t they? Day after day, in their own way.”

— Julie C. Dao

2. “Beauty is all very well. But it is merely the gleam of the sword, the chief eunuch said. It is the mind that provides the sharp blade, and without that, well. We have a pretty piece of metal and not a weapon at all.”

— Julie C. Dao

3. “Xifeng tilted her face, a pale moon in the evening of the water. She felt like a goddess in the shimmering light. She was a poem come to life, each vein was a lyric.”

— Julie C. Dao

4. “She would wrap her coils around him in tender confinement and be not his captive, but his captor.”

— Julie C. Dao

5. “Being underestimated can be a blessing in disguise,” Xifeng said. “That is to say, it gives us a chance to astonish those who doubt our true worth.”

— Julie C. Dao

6. “I want to mean something to a great deal of people. I am tired of being no one. As Empress, I would have the right to choose for myself. Guma could not command me, and Wei would not own me.”

— Julie C. Dao

7. “She knew her own worth. She would seize her destiny with all the strength and spirit within her, and bend them all to her will: every man kneeling and every woman overshadowed.”

— Julie C. Dao

8. “Women are complicated creatures.”

— Julie C. Dao

9. “For that is the way of the world, Guma’s voice echoed. Some are given a rope to the moon, and others claw up the sky.”

— Julie C. Dao

10. “Sometimes I think Xifeng’s the only one who knows what women are capable of, and that’s why she’s on that throne. I don’t agree with anything she’s done, but she believed in herself, and that’s what’s missing in me. If I don’t believe in myself, why should you? Why should my people?”

— Julie C. Dao

11. “I was born a woman into this world,” she said, echoing the concubine’s words. “And I will play the game, but I won’t lose.”

— Julie C. Dao

12. “The beauty of this world is fading all too fast through the cruelty and thoughtlessness of men.”

— Julie C. Dao

13. “I’m sick to death of lords and kings and emperors. What do they do but play games and let their people pay the price in blood?”

— Julie C. Dao

14. “Save me, she thought. Save me from this love dark road.”

— Julie C. Dao

15. “Bravery isn’t just about being strong and handy with a sword. Sometimes it’s about resolve... or deciding whether to face a past you’d rather forgot.”

— Julie C. Dao

16. “You will be Empress only if you are willing to take the dark road there. But you are not the only exceptional one, and you are not alone in being favored for greatness. The sooner you understand that, the better your choices will be.”

— Julie C. Dao

17. “Only kings are arrogant enough to believe the world is too small to hold other men.”

— Julie C. Dao

18. “She would bloom where she was planted and let her roots close around the throats of her enemies.”

— Julie C. Dao

19. “She, too, was part of this game in which women could only hope to survive by keeping each other down.”

— Julie C. Dao

20. “Love does not always come with marriage, Your Majesty. Marriage may strengthen a woman, but love weakens her. She has more to lose.”

— Julie C. Dao

21. “She was a monster, a bride of the darkness, and she rose to face her destiny as though it were the blood-red sunrise of a new day.”

— Julie C. Dao

22. “You leave pieces of yourself in the ones you love. It’s that not the greatest power, to endure in that way?”

— Julie C. Dao

23. “How their slippery hearts had scorched her throat, how the hot metallic tang of blood had given way to a roar of satisfaction that shook her whole being.”

— Julie C. Dao

24. “But in weakness, you find your strength. It takes no small amount of courage to open yourself up,” the Empress said gently. “You leave pieces of yourself in the ones you love. Is that not the greatest power, to endure in that way?”

— Julie C. Dao

25. “You understand, as I do, that wealth and family mean nothing if a person is not willing to prove his full worth.”

— Julie C. Dao

26. “Though Jade had never seen or heard the ocean, she thought Xifeng’s voice might sound like the sea – gentle beneath the wind, but hiding wild, untamed depths below the surface.”

— Julie C. Dao

27. “I tell you a throne is a greater imposition than it is a gift.”

— Julie C. Dao

28. “There was something unfinished about not saying farewell, like a door left open in the chill night.”

— Julie C. Dao

29. “Love killed your mother, Guma had always warned her. Give your heart and you lose your soul.”

— Julie C. Dao

30. “She looked like someone who would sing the universe to sleep and bend time itself if it meant achieving her greatest wish.”

— Julie C. Dao

31. “We learn about ourselves when we learn about others,” Jade said. “We respect different ways of life as food, traditions, and storytelling are shared across borders.”

— Julie C. Dao

32. “Love is weakness. You open yourself up to choices you’d never make if you heart were your own.”

— Julie C. Dao

33. “Isn’t’ it better to give up a fraction of your freedom to gain tenfold in happiness, even for a short time?”

— Julie C. Dao

34. “But then again, we all have dreams within reach, Jade thought. We have only to shape them to fit ourselves.”

— Julie C. Dao

35. “Cry not, for your tears are no more than rain upon your enemy’s face.”

— Julie C. Dao

36. “Some of us must rely on friends to see the best within us. That is how we find balance... And balance is what you need to succeed at court... like that apothecary’s scale you so aptly mentioned.”

— Julie C. Dao

37. “If my beauty is my greatest weapon, vanity is the shield that protects me.”

— Julie C. Dao

38. “A ruler has little time for kindness. He does not give without expecting something in return. He can’t afford to.”

— Julie C. Dao

39. “There’s power in a promise, no matter who you make it to.”

— Julie C. Dao

40. “Sometimes it is necessary to do questionable deeds to achieve what the heavens ordain, Xifeng said, thinking of all she herself has done. But in our losses, we may gain ourselves. We take what is ours and find solace in the quiet places between death destruction.”

— Julie C. Dao

41. “Isn’t it better to wake up each day, living for the present rather than waiting for the future?”

— Julie C. Dao

42. “She was thought too gentle to rule, but perhaps they were all wrong,” Fu said. “Perhaps gentleness is necessary to temper a ruler’s ruthlessness, and not weakness at all.”

— Julie C. Dao