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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 26a6b2c | Life was good, and already she understood that to be aware of happiness when you were actually feeling it, and not just in retrospect, was to be happy indeed. | Alison Weir | ||
| 7616fb0 | But Anne was asking herself why being queen mattered so much, when the chance for true love was hers for the seizing. And always she came back to the argument that the crown was hers for the seizing too. She had never seen marriage alone as an especially fulfilling estate for women. She had always wanted more in life - and more than she had ever dreamed of would soon, God willing, be in her grasp. There was so much that she could accomplish.. | Alison Weir | ||
| e5c8e4b | Until quite recently women's histories were largely overlooked but in the wake of feminism there has been increasing interest in retrieving them. | feminism history non-fiction royalty women-s-history | Alison Weir | |
| 25639d3 | Again, she may have made the equation that sexual involvement was inextricably linked with death. | Alison Weir | ||
| b4883b0 | William had now to consolidate his victory and establish himself as king, but first he sent his messenger across the sea to Normandy to tell Matilda that she was now, by the grace of God, queen of England. | Alison Weir | ||
| dc30066 | Be well advised what ye put in his head, for ye shall never pull it out again. | Alison Weir | ||
| b4d1824 | This was the culmination of all her hopes. God had seen fit to answer her prayers, and she was filled to the brim with thankfulness. She was to be Queen of England, raised by this magnificent young man to be the bride of his heart and the mother of his heirs. Those who had scorned he and tried to humiliate her would now have to defer to her - she tried not to relish the prospect, but she was only human. The days of want were gone for good; .. | Alison Weir | ||
| 704536b | Some of my subjects do not know what is good for them, | Alison Weir | ||
| 776aefc | The story was certainly current at court, and in 1535 a Member of Parliament, Sir George Throckmorton, accused Henry to his face of 'meddling' with both Anne's mother and sister Mary. 'Never with the mother,' Henry said. | henry-viii page-125 | Alison Weir | |
| e281414 | Late in the 16th centurt, William Cecil's son, Thomas reortedthat Philip had said that 'whatever he suffered from Queen Elizabeth was the judgement of God because, being married to Queen Elizabeth, whom he though a most virtuous and good lady, yet in the fancy of love he could not affect her; but as for the Lady Elizabeth; he was enamored of her, being a fair and beautiful woman. | Alison Weir | ||
| 70eb9d7 | If a ruler suffers subjects to be ill-educated, and then punishes them for crimes they commit in their ignorance, what else can we conclude but that he first makes thieves and then punishes them! | Alison Weir | ||
| de02fe6 | Although, by todays standards, he set a vast amount of work, he believed as he told Mrs Ashley, that 'If you pour much drink into a goblet, the most part will dash out and run over'. In Ascham's view, it was the carrot, and not the stick, that worked. | education roger-ascham tutoring-lady-elizabeth | Alison Weir | |
| 8e3193d | This led to a lessening of confidence in the judicial system. Justice, it seemed, was available only to those who could pay enough to secure a 'right verdict | Alison Weir | ||
| c159cf5 | Matilda managed to present William with ten children, which she probably could not have done had she been just over four feet tall. | Alison Weir | ||
| 85b91b3 | When you stopped to think about it, he reflected, there weren't many things in life one truly needed. To want too much was worse than greed: it was stupidity--a waste of precious time and effort. The | Tad Williams | ||
| 000d04d | A book, you see, is the only kind of trap that keeps its captive--which is knowledge--alive forever. | Tad Williams | ||
| 3d7fd5e | He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." More" | Tad Williams | ||
| 1b5d7b0 | In the midst of such industry, gawky Simon was the fabled grasshopper in the nest of ants. He knew he would never amount to much: many people had told him so, and nearly all of them were older--and presumably wiser--than he. At an age when other boys were clamoring for the responsibilities of manhood, Simon was still a muddler and a meanderer. No matter what task he was given to do, his attention soon wandered, and he would be dreaming of b.. | Tad Williams | ||
| ae14bb2 | Stories are the things people use to give the universe a shape...there is little difference between a folktale, a religous revelation, and a scientific theor | Tad Williams | ||
| 6bea43b | His virtual home showed none of the ostentation of others in the Brotherhood, no Gothic-fortress-perched-on-impossible-cliffs or Caligulean excesses of decor (usually accompanied by an equally Caligulean want of decorum.) | Tad Williams | ||
| 9bffdd9 | Welcome, Simon, to the world of those who are every day condemned to thinking and wondering and never ever knowing with certainness. | Tad Williams | ||
| 6542857 | There's sense, he told himself. You build something and then you stay there. That's the way it's meant to be. Not this running here, running there, never see your blood-family or your home roofs for a year at a time. | Tad Williams | ||
| c4a3e03 | As he slipped away he heard his own cradled heartbeat, muffled though it was in the tickling wool of exhaustion. | Tad Williams | ||
| b6ef7f5 | Something gurgled in his throat. It took a moment before he realized it was a scream bottled in his innards, a blast of misery trying to force its way out. | Tad Williams | ||
| 961aa7f | Of all the songs we Zida'ya sing," she (Aditu) murmured, "the closest to our hearts are those which tell of things lost." "Perhaps that is because none of us can show something's value until it is gone," said Josua." | Tad Williams | ||
| d00441c | Wagner's Ring Cycle has kept one version of one of the great Norse stories alive in the minds of music lovers. Readers of modern fantasy will find many echoes of the Norse tales as well. Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams and others have explicitly taken some of the Norse gods and put them into a modern setting with strange, sad and humorous results. Echoes of Norse tales and creatures abound in the speculative fiction of Ursula Le Guin, J.R.R. Tol.. | Matt Clayton | ||
| 341b46a | He shouldn't have had to die." "Nobody should have to die," Miriamele said slowly. "Especially while they're still alive." | Tad Williams | ||
| 820c91a | The world was all mud and wire. The war in the heavens was only a faint imitation of the horror men had learned to make. | Tad Williams | ||
| 6cda3aa | Kind of like I suspect things are at night in the It's A Small World ride, when all the little figures come to life and whisper about how they'd like to torture and murder all those screaming children and grinning grown-ups in the boats. | Tad Williams | ||
| cb155f9 | God shapes us with a hammer of pain on an anvil of duty. I cannot imagine what shape we will be when He is finished. | Tad Williams | ||
| 3b32e51 | You see, that is the secret of history, little Briony--who tells the last story. | Tad Williams | ||
| 99bfd5c | I'm pretty much a cat that way. Scratch my stomach, and I'll purr at you, but I'll want to gut you with my claws even more than if you'd ignored me. | Tad Williams | ||
| aeaf88b | Love. Tired old jokes aside, a real, powerful love does have one thing in common with Hell itself: it burns everything else out of you. | Tad Williams | ||
| 4f83c20 | We call darkness our friend, but when the elders tell us stories of the Garden, they talk of the holy, unending light that was there. How did shadows become our only dwelling? | Tad Williams | ||
| dfe6cfd | If you are going to without trust. men tasks to do, then once they have proved themselves, you should let them get on without you standing over them. There is no point in giving responsibility wifh | Tad Williams | ||
| 3c0cd7f | He led them around the base of a great fallen tree whose exposed roots resembled more than anything else a huge broom - a broom that would have fired the imagination of Rachel the Dragon toward heroic, legendary feats of sweeping. | irony | Tad Williams | |
| 0417285 | She floated in the midst of a living shadow. There was nothing but herself, surrounded by an unimaginable blackness. She could not think, not properly. She could only wait, while time or perhaps some incompetent impostor did its work. The emptiness was aeons long. Even imagination died. Aeons long. Then at last she felt something-a fluttering in the void, Oh God, it was real, it was! Something distant, but actually separate from herself. No.. | Tad Williams | ||
| 316011f | a proud man who could do more than he is asked to do. It is not good for the spirit. | Tad Williams | ||
| 8874004 | But a mouse can be brave. Small as they are, though, they learn it is wiser not to challenge the cat. | Tad Williams | ||
| e8cd8ad | ATTORNEY: "When you sign one of our contracts, it says very clearly on page one hundred and seventeen that all crimes that occur onsite must be immediately and accurately reported to the company." | Tad Williams | ||
| c208ca7 | At four years of age children accept without surprise that which is daily paraded before their eyes | Jean Plaidy | ||
| b1c1cb2 | What was the good of restrained laughter; it made a mockery of the entire practice of laughing. | Jean Plaidy | ||
| 87819a5 | She doubted not that in time she would grow as indifferent as others to these matters; but there was a softness within her which made it difficult for her. She must conform. She must be like those who lived about her. But for the time being she would refuse to think of the cruel things which could happen to men and women, merely because they spoke too freely. She wanted to be happy; therefore she would not think of anything that might make .. | Jean Plaidy | ||
| b963f4d | Her fault had been in trying to keep it as tight as a mistress might. All a wife needed was a little more subtlety, and it had taken her two years of doubts and nightmares to realize this. Let him wander away from her, let him dally with others--it would but be to compare them with his incomparable queen. | Jean Plaidy |