Reputation is what other people know about you.  Honor is what you know about yourself.

If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?

His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action.  She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.

If you can't do what you want, do what you can.