1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
2208
3346
3522
5443
5619
6560
6561
6562
6563
6564
6757
7581
8098
8422
8625
8752
8832
8882
8913
8932
8945
8953
8957
8960
8962
8963
8964
8965
▲
▼
| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 0c005de | Alec Guthrie looked into the domineering, incongruous eyes which showed something of impatience and something of regret and something, blatant and wounding, of sharp self-derision. 'Abandon your quest,' said Francis Crawford. 'What you are looking for, dear Alec, is buried. And no leech in London is going to revive it. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 7e97f8d | He is not immutable. No man can be. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| e86bca7 | It was, perhaps, a mark of Francis Crawford's singular authority that he returned to Compiegne after five days' absence to find his forces well quartered, in good heart and active in harassing the enemy. Nothing untoward indeed had happened, save that Jerott Blyth, returning from a brief Paris leave, had ordered the sommelier to give him the keys of the wine cellars, and had not left his room since he used them. Danny Hislop, irritated and .. | dorothy dunnett | ||
| f33ae96 | Irregular relationships among a royal family and its adherents were a matter of course; often a matter of business; and only occasionally a matter of love. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 6fa70ce | The arrangement, temporary or otherwise, was usually public and acknowledged when at the highest level; only when it was clandestine and conducted to the injury of legitimate relatives did it become untenable in the oblique moral eye of society. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 63103be | Mother of God, Francis Crawford of Lymond, you've made a slut of your art, have you not, as well as a whore of yourself? | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| c8a0769 | Intentions, yours or anyone else's, don't matter; they never matter and never excuse: get that into your head. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 6d6c9ed | The alternative is English force: reprisals and raids and counter-raids and broken promises, as you say. Of course you must try to secure this alliance. You might have achieved it in the last reign but for Henry. It was he who fostered the cult of the honest emotion, and you're still paying for the mistake. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 7539f80 | Lymond is back." It was known soon after the Sea-Catte reached Scotland from Campvere with an illicit cargo and a man she should not have carried. "Lymond is in Scotland." It was said by busy men preparing for war against England, with contempt, with disgust; with a side-slipping look at one of their number. "I hear the Lord Culter's young brother is back." Only sometimes a woman's voice would say it with a different note, and then laugh a .. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 5d7f114 | I am alone. There is no God where I am. | Aleister Crowley | ||
| eba4055 | It would have made a fitting tomb, she supposed, for Thady Boy Ballagh. That it was fitting for Francis Crawford she would not believe. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 119f5e1 | You're so damned brilliant," said Phelim. "You know everything. It's hard-set you'd be to give yourself a dull Saturday afternoon. We're all puppets--not the old Queens only, but the rest of us, man, woman and child, looking the fools of the world. [...] You have them there, on their strings, all curled tight to your littlest finger; and you little heeding as you swing them what soul you may bruise." | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 7de1af2 | Blaspheme if you must,' said Blyth wearily. 'You'll get your wages all right. You'll survive.' 'I'm not going to die of laughing at any rate,' said Lymond, and Blyth nearly lost his temper again. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 4280c42 | Lymond, left to speak first, said agreeably, "Quite so. I, King of Flesh, flourishing in my flowers. Come in. I am sensible, sober, and have no designs on your virtue." | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 48ee359 | I wished to warn you about the scimitar cut, and also that your men may find it disconcerting when the Janissaries scream.' No more than amused at the tact, 'I scream too,' said Lymond gravely. 'And louder. But it is kind of you to advise. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| de634fc | Pray don't allow the shock of it all to confuse you," she said. "Popular resurrections are a tedious pastime of Francis's." | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 37c4d3e | Francis asked him to stand watch this evening on the Cessford road, and he's very anxious to save Francis from sin.' 'A risk which does not unduly trouble M. Crawford himself,' said the Chevalier pointedly | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| a455ce6 | If we surrender we'll get our throats cut anyway. Let's go out in a blaze of glory. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 0adf9b3 | Welcome with hautbois, clarions and trumpets, noble lady. Welcome to the company of those who can be hurt. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 475e529 | Truth's nothing but falsehood with the edges sharpened up, and ill-tempered at that: no repair, no retraction, no possible going back once it's out. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 97edbe0 | How old do you think he is?' said Sybilla placidly. 'To tell you the truth, I don't want him hanging about my petticoats for the rest of my life. He is, you must admit, a little disruptive in the home. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| d3736cc | Patriotism," said Lymond again. "It's an opulent word, a mighty key to a royal Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. Patriotism; loyalty; a true conviction that of all the troubled and striving world, the soil of one's fathers is noblest and best. A celestial competition for the best breed of man; a vehicle for shedding boredom and exercising surplus power or surplus talents or surplus money; an immature and bigoted intolerance which becomes the coin of barte.. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 98b3d55 | isn't it sometimes more expensive to accept favours than it is to buy them?" He" | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 9a741e7 | The undiscriminating vulture is not our real danger: open scandal would simply drive him into profitless exile again, and would be of no possible advantage to us. Neither should we fear our sturdy patriots who, like your father, are busy with their loyalties in queer and crooked ways. Our danger lies with the men who want to take this country by trunk and limb and wreak it into such a shape that it will fit them and their children for hose .. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| cd78a59 | I don't like being permanently mutilated on Thursdays. I may add that Friday is my day for raping; and I like it quieter than this, and they enjoy it. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| cd407c9 | Because you have done all that skill could devise to present a detached case, and failed. Because you are asking for help, and you hate asking for help. [...] This may be,' said Richard with unexpected wry humour, 'a crusade conducted by the Culter family solo in a band of dissentients, but I am with you. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| a53491d | For this, you are right, I need to be either entirely sober or very drunk indeed. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 59dce85 | You had good reason to hate me. I always understood that. I don't know why you should think differently now, but take care. Don't build up another false image. I may be the picturesque sufferer now, but when I have the whip-hold, I shall behave quite as crudely, or worse. I have no pretty faults. Only, sometimes, a purpose. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 9ce2daf | It was odd, Adam thought, that Lymond's harshest opponent should be his brother, and that each man had such power to hurt the other. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| eae6905 | To the devil with your pearldrops and your parroty manners. A filled mind and an apt wit will earn you all the respect any man has the means to deserve. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 2c72a94 | Discomfort without hope of betterment is not a great springboard. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 30fdc35 | He remembered that clear, icy journey to Lampozhnya, and the sledges arching and hissing across the glittering axle tree of world. For a few days, what he had felt was pure happiness. And what Lymond had known, he now saw, was freedom. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 5784708 | Good evening, ladies. The gentlemen now entering behind you are all fully armed. I am Francis Crawford of Lymond and I want your lives or your jewels -- the latter for preference; both if necessary. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 12f5762 | I have many fears,' Lymond said. 'But death is not one of them. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| b6e4cc7 | A queen does not need to be crowned,' said Guzel, 'in order to rule. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 6e4d9a1 | Man is not intellect only,' Guthrie said. 'Not until you reject all the claims of your body. Not until you have stamped out, little by little, all that is left of your soul. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 4d307d7 | I don't mind being labelled devilish but I do mind being regarded as unlucky. The only way to answer that is by a string of successes. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| c49ad5a | And because death was a friend, the one man who was made to receive, like a tuning-fork, the whispering omens of fate did not recognize it, until too late. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| aebe4b8 | Oh God, thought Jerott. Don't let it happen. She doesn't deserve the torment. The lifetime of waiting, in return for a handful of moments of ecstasy. And standing behind him, always, the ghosts of his other, experienced women. The thoughts he did not share. The knowledge that one had his total friendship but never the key to the innermost door. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| b9f36f8 | You'll seek out strumpets, fumble with courtiers, fornicate with either parent of the heiress you are supposed to be marrying, but to embrace your wife sickens you?' The music stopped in the room; and the movement. 'Ah,' said Lymond. His face had emptied. 'From a new host and an old harlot, the good Lord deliver us. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 40e7967 | There was a little silence. Then Danny Hislop heaved a sigh. 'O beau sire Dieu, what a hell of an evening. Jerott, you either want to have another half-bottle, or vomit three ways what you have, like the Rosault.' In five months the professionals Hislop and Blyth had reached an understanding. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 5869636 | Standing drunk in the yard, while the rain soaked his hair and spread cold through the cloth of his doublet, Jerott thought of the fine design, firmly executed, of the campaign of Guines and of Calais. And of his own joy and his liberation, after these huckstering years, to be again under the hand of this man, his arts at their meridian. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 841bce4 | Come in,' he said. 'You can use Adam's rooms.' His hand, moving upwards, drew the fair, tangled hair clear of Lymond's eyes and checked, at the shudder that ran jarring through from his fingertips. Lymond dropped his hands. He made no protest. He did not look up. But unimpeded at last, Jerott could see the look on his face and give it, sickeningly, its correct interpretation. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 036a22f | He and Richard had met on the strand at Philorth and like the sand under their feet, all the muddled solicitude which had prompted that journey had in five minutes dispersed through their fingers. | Dorothy Dunnett |