You can do what you like, sir, but I'll tell you this. New York is the true capital of America. Every New Yorker knows it, and by God, we always shall.
So does nobody care about Ireland?" "Nobody. Neither King Louis, nor King Billie, nor King James." He nodded thoughtfully. "The fate of Ireland will be decided by men not a single one of whom gives a damn about her. That is her tragedy."
Paris. City of love. City of dreams. City of splendour. City of saints and scholars. City of gaiety. Sink of iniquity. In two thousand years, Paris had seen it all.
She was quiet for a moment or two. Then she said: 'Cruel words are a terrible thing, Quash. Sometimes you regret them. But what's been said cannot be unsaid.
True the greater part of the Irish people was close to starvation. The numbers of weakened people dying from disease were rising. So few potatoes had been planted that, even if they escaped bight, they would not be enough to feed the poor folk who relied upon them. More and more of those small tenants and cottagers, besides, were being forced off the land and into a condition of helpless destitution. Ireland, that is to say, was a country u..
Don't you know that there's another bubble as well An expectations bubble. Bigger houses private planes yachts ...... stupid salaries and bonuses. People come to desire these things and expect them. But the expectations bubble will burst as well as all bubbles do. Come to my gallery and I will sell you beautiful things at a more reasonable price. But the point is that they will have value. Things of real beauty things of the spirit.
And suddenly it came to him. That Strawberry Fields garden he'd come from, and the Freedom Tower he'd been thinking of: taken together, didn't they contain the two words that said it all about this city, the two words that really mattered? It seemed to him that they did. Two words: the one an invitation, the other an ideal, an adventure, a necessity. "Imagine" said the garden. "Freedom" said the tower. Imagine freedom. That was the spirit, ..
Love might come suddenly, unsought, from a place not looked for, and stay for a while before departing into the distance, to a place where it cannot be reached.
Then he noticed the belt. He pulled it out. The thing had been handed down in the family since God knows when. His father had told: 'Better keep it. It's wampum. Supposed to be lucky.' William shrugged. He could sure as hell use some luck today. On an impulse, he decided to put it on. Under his shirt of course-- he didn't want to look like a damn fool. Then he dressed as usual, every inch the successful man. If he was going down, he'd go do..
Can you do it?' 'Maybe I can, and maybe I can't. But I am going to make MacDuff think that I can. And belief,' said Gabriel Love, with the smile of an angel, 'is a wonderful thing.
So how would you define a Londoner, then?" Lady Penny asked curiously. "Someone who lives here. It's like the old definition of a cockney: someone who's born within hearing distance of Bow bells. And a foreigner," he added with a grin, "is anyone, Anglo-Saxon or not, who lives outside." --
When a voyager begins a journey, he prepares his ship, decides upon his course and sets sail. What else can he do? But he cannot know the outcome - what storms may arise, what new lands he may find, or whether or not he will return. That is destiny, and you must accept it. Never think you can escape destiny.
And in busy London there now grew up one of the greatest gifts that the English genius was to leave the world. For in the reign of Elizabeth I began the first and greatest flowering of the glorious English theatre.
Human nature, gentleman. It is original sin that leads men to misfortune, every time. I am a speculator in the market, gentlemen, and that is part of God's plan. Men only learn through suffering. So I punish human weakness, and God rewards me.
Gotham admired Maeve. By day she managed money, and did it brilliantly, but she didn't find it satisfied her intellect. She spoke four languages. She played the piano seriously well. And she read books. Lots of them.
And he glanced down at Mercy beside him, and saw in her face such radiant goodness, such a calm certainty, that it seemed to him that if he could only be with her all his life, he should know a love, and happiness, and peace that he had never known before.
We, the heirs of Saint Patrick, we who kept alive the Christian faith and the writings of ancient Rome when most of the world had sunk under the barbarians, we who gave the Saxons their education are to be taught a lesson in Christianity by the English?
We have all been robbed of the land we have loved for a thousand years. Do you not see that, Welshman? Can you not imagine his rage? We were not even conquered. We were deceived.
The English Church, it was claimed, was Catholicism purified and reformed. And what was the nature of this reform? The truth was that nobody, least of all Henry himself, had much idea.
About the nobles--not just de Cygne, all of them. They don't care. Just remember that. Do what you have to do with them, because they have the power. I don't know if they'll always have it, but they do now, and they'll have it as long as you live, my son. So don't ever go against them. But just remember, no matter what they say, don't ever trust them. Because they don't care about you, and they never will, because you're not one of them." H..
Oh Lord, we thank Thee for this thy gift of lobster Newburg. And grant us also, if it be Thy will, control of the Hudson Ohio Railroad.' 'But we ain't wanting control of the Hudson Ohio," Sean softly objected. 'True,' said Gabriel Love, 'but the Almighty doesn't need to know that yet."
And Dirk van Dyck the Dutchman realized that he never had been, and never would be, as proud of any child as he was of his elegant little Indian daughter at that moment.
These are graven images - idolatry. A sin." He knew it was true. This was a love of worldly beauty utterly at odds with all he knew to be Puritan and holy." --
That was the trouble with being too highly born, Finbarr considered. The gods paid too much attention to you. It was ever thus in the Celtic world. Ravens would fly over the house to announce the death of a clan chief, swans would desert the lake. A king's bad judgement could affect the weather. And if you were a prince, the druids made prophesies about you from before the day you were born; and after that, there was no escape.
No one there could possibly have missed its significance. No church in England had ever been disgraced with such a thing. From the shape of the dome, the Corinthian columns - every detail had suddenly fallen into place - this was clearly, if not a copy, then the very brother of that infamous dome that hung over what every Puritan knew was the great house of iniquity itself. "Dear Lord!" he cried. "It's just like St Peter's - at the Vatican...
Unfortunately he's just sold all his stock. We gave him the funds today." "Sold everything?" "I tried to persuade him not to, but he came in on Monday and said he'd decided not to tempt fate." The clerk smiled. "Said he'd had a sign from St. Anthony."
The great festival of Lughnasa was held at Carmun once every three years. The site of Carmun was eerie. In a land of wild forest and bog, it was an open grassy space that stretched, green and empty, halfway to the horizon. Lying some distance west of the point where, if you were following it upstream, the Liffey's course began to retreat eastwards on the way to its source in the Wicklow Mountains, the place was absolutely flat, except for s..