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b45f3dd
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Well, a marriage between Friends is ... between the Friends marrying. No clergyman, I mean, and no specific prayer or service. The two Friends marry each other, rather than it being considered a sacrament administered by a priest or the like. But it does need to be done before witnesses--other Friends, you know,
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Diana Gabaldon |
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5aca79e
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though. It isn't necessarily easier if you know what it is you're meant to do--but at least you don't waste time in questioning or doubting. If you're honest--well, that isn't necessarily easier, either. Though I suppose if you're honest with yourself and know what you are, at least you're less likely to feel that you've wasted your life, doing the wrong thing.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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efee7e7
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There aren't any answers, only choices.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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2990031
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She saw it, and an extraordinary change came over her. She seemed scarcely to move, and yet all at once, her whole person was focused on Myers. No white showed around her eyes; they were black and fathomless, shining in the firelight. She was still short and heavy, but with only the slightest change of posture, depth of bosom and width of hip were emphasized, suddenly curved in a promise of lewd abundance. Myers swallowed, audibly.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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91f5260
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The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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58cc768
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people will treat with disdain such phenomena as are proved by the evidence of the senses, and commonly experienced--while they will defend to the death the reality of a phenomenon which they have neither seen nor experienced.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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950a57d
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The other men also disarmed, as was suitable in the house of God, leaving an impressively bristling pile of lethality in the back pew.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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b006f47
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bein' cooped up indoors." The little finger waggled briefly."
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Diana Gabaldon |
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b253de9
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His heart was beating very erratically; perhaps it would conveniently stop. He waited for a moment to allow it to do this if it liked, but it went on cheerfully thumping away.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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5769eac
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Despair dragged at me like an anchor, pulling me down. I closed my eyes and retreated to some dim place within, where there was nothing but an aching grey blankness...
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resistance
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Diana Gabaldon |
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b692e52
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With no Law to regulate their Behavior save Self-interest, though, plainly there is Nothing to prevent an irregular Militia from becoming more of a Threat to the Citizenry than the Dangers from which it offers to preserve them.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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98c0c21
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It was very, very peaceful, and all of a sudden I found myself shaking so hard that I had to sit down on the stream bank. Anytime. It could happen anytime, and just this fast. I wasn't sure which seemed most unreal; the bear's attack, or this, the soft summer night, alive with promise. I rested my head on my knees, letting the sickness, the residue of shock, drain away.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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3c3e88a
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dropped peacefully into sleep, to dream of kilted Highland men, and the sound of soft-spoken Scots, burring round a fire like the sound of bees in the heather.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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0a9d563
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you understood why people have always looked up into the sky when talking to God. You need to feel the immensity of something very much bigger than yourself, and there it is--immeasurably vast, and always near at hand. Covering you.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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d0aee57
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There was a curious peace in this day, a sense of things working quietly in their proper courses, nothing minding the upsets and turmoils of human concerns. Perhaps it was the peace that one always finds outdoors, far enough away from buildings and clatter. Maybe it was the result of gardening, that quiet sense of pleasure in touching growing things, the satisfaction of helping them thrive.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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a85a043
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What Jack Randall had done to him had sunk into his soul as surely as the flails of the lash had sunk in his back, and had left scars every bit as permanent. I
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Diana Gabaldon |
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3982678
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Toulouse-Lautrec syndrome. I had never seen a case before, but I had heard it described. Named for its most famous sufferer (who did not yet exist, I reminded myself), it was a degenerative disease of bone and connective tissue. Victims often appeared normal, if sickly, until their early teens, when the long bones of the legs, under the stress of bearing a body upright, began to crumble and collapse upon themselves.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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42ea500
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As a mother, I had the lightness now of effort complete, honor satisfied. Mission accomplished.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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db7164a
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He came toward us, looking worried. As the birth grew closer, we had both been edgy; Frank irritable and myself terrified, having no idea what might happen between us, with the appearance of Jamie Fraser's child. But when the nurse had taken Brianna from her bassinet and handed her to Frank, with the words "Here's Daddy's little girl," his face had grown blank, and then--looking down at the tiny face, perfect as a rosebud--gone soft with wo..
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Diana Gabaldon |
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4eaa8bf
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She eyed her brother, standing by the window with his legs braced wide apart, hands on the sill and back stubbornly set against her. She bit her lip and a calculating look came over her face. Quick as lightening, she stooped and her hand shot under his kilt like a striking snake.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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50c42db
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Often people who are very ill, but are near their birthday, seem to wait until it's passed before dying. I
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Diana Gabaldon |
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69bb404
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The small, homely scar of a smallpox vaccination. Rain
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Diana Gabaldon |
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663922d
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Soon, God willing, we would settle; find a place to make a home and a life. I wanted nothing more, and yet at the same time, I worried. We had known each other only a few months since my return. Each touch, each word was still at once tinged with memory and new with rediscovery. What would happen when we were thoroughly accustomed to each other, living day by day in a routine of mundane tasks? "Will ye grow tired of me, do ye think?" he mur..
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Diana Gabaldon |
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68328fc
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But I do know. At the same Time, I cannot be sure how the Things that I know will come about. Am I meant to be in some Way Part of this? Should I hold back, will that somehow damage or prevent the Success of our Desires? I often wish I could discuss these Questions with your Husband, though Presbyterian that he is, I think he would find them even more unsettling than I do. And in the end, it does not matter. I am what God has made me, and m..
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Diana Gabaldon |
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85208ff
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that a man must be responsible for any seed he sows, for it's his duty to take care of a woman and protect her. And if I wasna prepared to do that, then I'd no right to burden a woman with the consequences of my own actions.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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693bf4c
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Do women hold back the evolution of such things as freedom and other social ideals, out of fear for themselves or their children? Or do they in fact inspire such things - and the risks required to reach them - by providing the things worth fighting for? Not merely fighting to defend, either, but to propel forward, for a man wanted more for his children than he would ever have.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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a224514
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He felt a little queasy, and more than a little light-headed. More and more, he felt the disorientation, the fragmenting of himself between day and night. By day, he was a creature of the mind alone, as he escaped his damp immobility by a stubborn, disciplined retreat into the avenues of thought and meditation, seeking refuge in the pages of books. But with the rising of the moon, all sense fled, succumbing at once to sensation, as he emerg..
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Diana Gabaldon |
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003e742
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Does it bother you that I'm not a virgin?" He hesitated a moment before answering. "Well, no," he said slowly, "so long as it doesna bother you that I am." He grinned at my drop-jawed expression, and backed toward the door."
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Diana Gabaldon |
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7b4bd54
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It took two days, and God kens well that I recall every second of those days--yet it seems that I lost her between one heartbeat and the next. And I--I keep lookin' for her there, in that space between.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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c2f0f82
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Mm. You'd forgotten how to say anything except 'I love you,' but you said that a lot.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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d967871
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It was a hot summer--there wasn't any other kind in Boston
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Diana Gabaldon |
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e494f62
|
O Lord, bless the blood and the flesh of this the creature that You gave me," Jamie said softly. He scooped a pinch of the herbs himself, and rubbed them between thumb and forefinger, in a rain of fragrant dust. "Created by Your hand as You created man, Life given for life. That me and mine may eat with thanks for the gift, That me and mine may give thanks for Your own sacrifice of blood and flesh, Life given for life."
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Diana Gabaldon |
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8019f65
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Feelings aren't truth.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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543ec04
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this is just the
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Diana Gabaldon |
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dfeccb5
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And so he and Ian--who, it turned out, could also knit and was prostrated by mirth at my lack of knowledge--had taught me the simple basics of knit and purl, explaining, between snorts of derision over my efforts, that in the Highlands all boys were routinely taught to knit, that being a useful occupation well suited to the long idle hours of herding sheep or cattle on the shielings.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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3ca3828
|
I felt deeply betrayed that the man I depended on as friend, protector, and lover intended to do such a thing to me. And my sense of self-preservation was quietly terrified at the thought of submitting myself to the mercies of someone who handled a fifteen-pound claymore as though it were a flywhisk.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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b7eb68e
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But we do not fear silence, for often God speaks loudest in the quiet of our hearts.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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c36b46a
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And I want only to throw myself into it and be consumed.
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Diana Gabaldon |
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9ab9f59
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yowled, and Mrs. Chisholm--who was a rather buxom
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Diana Gabaldon |
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a6dbd5b
|
Good morning, Sassenach,
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Diana Gabaldon |
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9166b90
|
Will you do me the honor of sharing my bed, O lord and master?" I asked politely. Obviously suspecting something, he considered a moment, then nodded, just as formally. "I will. Thank you." He was raising the reins to go when I stopped him. "There's just one more thing, master," I said, still polite. "Aye?" I whipped my hand from the concealed pocket in my skirt, and the dawn light struck sparks from the blade of the dagger pressed against ..
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Diana Gabaldon |
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3395ef4
|
It looks as though it hurt." "It did." "Did you cry?" His fists clenched involuntarily at his sides. "Yes!" Jenny walked back around to face him, pointed chin lifted and slanted eyes wide and bright. "So did I," she said softly. "Every day since they took ye away."
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Diana Gabaldon |
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00e2d93
|
All right. Where are we going?
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Diana Gabaldon |
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6e8bb03
|
Christ, was he going to die in public, in a pleasure garden, in the company of a sodomite spy dressed like a rooster?
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Diana Gabaldon |