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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 6b360e5 | I want you to slip it under Mademoiselle d'Albon's chamber door. If she opens it and throws an axe at you, come and tell me. If not, you may go back to bed. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 3810ab1 | Do you think I envy him? At least I was reared without tenderness and without expectation of it. During all that time, you were breeding a hothouse love based on deception. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| b7a598a | She wouldn't send anyone, nor would she take anyone with her. She organizes witches' Sabbaths every full moon,' explained Philippa tartly. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| a3b27ca | He received another kiss which led him to wonder, hopefully, if the English bastard at the Hotel d'Hercule was dying. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 7801f37 | I asked,' Sybilla said, 'because I have seen him like this before ... once; when he elected to take everyone else's business in hand and return it to them correctly aligned, like an artist with a child's drawing. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 48d6f22 | From limbo, you cannot say forgive me, unless you can also say you regret what you have done. I have no regrets. I have nothing to tell you, except what you know already: that love is a powerful master. For his favours do you pay tribute and toll while flesh endures, and no doubt after. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| ae76ba2 | Archie shrugged. 'All I know is what's going to happen.' Philippa said, 'What should I do?' And Archie said, 'Break him. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 33f3003 | Absence is absence, whatever causes it. It is no more or less an affront to you. I did say, as I remember, that I would try to do what you wished me to do. And that you must forgive me if I failed. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| d9bec08 | He said, 'Then you don't know, Philippa, what I am.' 'I know what you think you are,' Philippa said. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| b60d3e3 | I will give you to Catherine. I will not give you to a hole in the ground. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 59f70ad | He said, 'Don't. That is not a weapon for you. And it destroys what we have.' 'But I have nothing, yet,' Philippa said. 'And all the nicety is on your side. Which means I choose any weapon that suits me. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 740b13a | Why not? I thought we were speaking of death and dishonour? You would advance to your grave and I should join the ranks of your numerous dead: Diccon and Salablanca, Tosh and Christian Stewart; Oonagh; Will Scott and his father; Turkey Mat and Tom Erskine; the dog Luadhas; the child Khaireddin.... What shall I say to your son when I meet him? | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 7954198 | Try to remember.... There is a difference between absence and death. And you are needed. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 62728da | Every other woman since Eve,' he said. 'Except you. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 9e982a6 | How, in twenty days, do you create for a man a new and irresistible motive for his existence? And how, this done, do you preserve him and his family from a blow so devastating as to be, in some ways, worse than self-destruction? | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| c704387 | No ties; no duty; no relief. Three filaments gone in the life-thread, fragile as the thread of the silk-moth, which has no organs by which it can nourish itself, but instead is born, and loves once, and then dies. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 96eef9b | I am like the Swiss. I prefer not to fight on a Wednesday. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| dfa39cc | Like the narration of those who preach to those who do not wish to hear, my story has failed to excite anyone. They don't believe me. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 7e4bc47 | She's got sense, that girl; and too much backbone to push herself where she's not wanted. Tell her it's no good, and she'll soon see the point. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| a3f3bbc | Then,' Richard said, 'I think we accept your scheme, with one important change in it. You, too, must be watched and followed.' 'And slept with?' Lymond said. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| fa8d86d | So who would do all this?' 'I should,' Richard said. 'Even to sleeping in your own chamber.' 'That I baulk at,' Lymond said. 'The rest you can have. One cock per pen is enough. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 7cc5afb | Dear God,' Richard said, and stood up. 'Can you not dispense with a bawd between Thursday and Monday? | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 8b432f5 | If I had killed you, none of this would have happened.' 'I thought you would realize it sooner or later,' Lymond said. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| ae87296 | I wonder if there exists any other man, even at this Court, who has to be restrained day and night to preserve a girl's honour? | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 6c71350 | There he goes. What do you think he will do?' 'What you want him to do,' Adam said dryly. 'Doesn't he always?' 'No,' Lymond said. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 566ca5f | Does anyone--Jerott?--know a nice clean strumpet who doesn't have the pox and will sleep in my room tonight to discourage Richard? She needn't stay beyond half an hour, and I don't want to meet her.' 'And that's a bloody waste,' said Jerott belligerently. 'And it's going to stay a bloody waste,' said Lymond tartly. 'I want a little privacy, not to work up a joint reputation as Hophni and Phinehas. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 693b410 | I showed you your face in the mirror. It was not only the face of one who loves, but the face of one whose love is returned. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| c038c25 | I should rather, Philippa, marry where there is no love than marry and find love turn to jealousy. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 6538cea | A reluctant watchdog, Culter held a post of small dignity, vulnerable to a thousand shafts of wit ... which did not arrive. Francis at his most quiet, his most responsible showed his elder brother the face, Adam thought, his friends sometimes saw. And from that realized that Francis, in those final days, was drawing from obscurity an old friendship, to be remembered later maybe, and recognized. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 2fcb7ba | If one believes in God, but has learned not to pray, one offers only, in silence, one's apologies, and then asks the spirit to do what it can. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 68c4006 | A reckoning formally appointed and now paid to the limit. A tribute to Janus, God of Gates, to prevent that other, deferred payment to Charon. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| bed01f5 | He has merely broken, as always, every promise he ever made, before man or God. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 749595a | Can you imagine what it feels like for me, to pledge my word to preserve a girl's honour and have it broken for me by Francis? | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| befc59e | Austin said, 'He is very plausible. I believed him when he gave me his oath.' 'Never do that,' said Richard flatly. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 55f4f6f | Sybilla said, 'I wish you would explain something you said. That there was something formidable in that household of Sevigny?' 'Ah,' said Piero Strozzi. 'It does not lend itself truly to words. But you know, perhaps, you, Lord Culter and you, Blacklock, the alla sanguigna, the blue-red shimmer of a sword when it is drawn from the flesh? That is what it was like: the alla sanguigna, burning behind all the politenesses. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 902e25c | He was not his own master when he left Russia,' Sybilla said. 'Nor was he his own master when you brought him to France. He is like a river forced into glass and driven from stem to stem of a conjurer's maze without ever reaching the sea. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 567a261 | Quel changement, Strozzi had said, and it was true. The change was there, and not only in the chamois and lawn, replacing the velvet, the rubies, the gold tissue. It was as if all about him had been stripped down and cleansed and reduced, without blurring, to its true structure. And his eyes, which were smiling, were clear. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 09ac170 | In Sevigny, there was something so deep and so dangerous that it could barely be felt. But there was no music. And there was no laughter. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 79b31b9 | We don't go near the bridge,' said Lymond peacefully. 'Excuse me,' said Fergie Hoddim. 'How can you wreck a fine bridge without going near it?' 'By sending something else near it instead,' Lymond said. 'An ox to Jupiter, a dog to Hecate, a dove to Venus, a sow to Ceres, a fish to Neptune. What, instead of Fergie Hoddim, shall we sacrifice? | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| f1e8aad | It is not enough,' Robert Reid said, 'to offer justice. The laws of men, the laws of God himself are not enough unless you know the heart, the tongue, the brain, the gut of your people. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| a38413e | There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt. | Aleister Crowley | ||
| 19d7e88 | I once heard a man speak, who had understanding, and the promise of vision. He was called the Master of Culter. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| d47ff04 | Jerott, his face frowning with sleeplessness, was looking at Richard, this powerful man with the brilliant grey eyes who had not contemplated bereavement with stoicism but was rebelling, as Sybilla was not rebelling, against what he had found. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 774ba4c | Sometimes,' said Mikal, 'one must travel to find what is love.' 'Sometimes,' said Philippa stoutly, 'one must travel to find what is kindness. I know what is----I know what love is. | Dorothy Dunnett |