Verily, God hath eighteen thousand worlds; and verily, your world is one of them, and this its bright axle-tree.

Only common mortals like the Somervilles have good old rotten hates, dear,' said her mother. 'Sir Graham manages to love everybody and wouldn't know what you're talking about. Have a bun.' 'He doesn't...

I hope the string and clapper arrangement he calls a mind has been permanently put out of action.

Well. On which aspect of our ill-advised doings are we about to lecture each other? I have very little to say. As I recall, I exhausted the matter on several other occasions.

Speak, she said, as you would write: as if your words were letters of lead, graven there for all time, for which you must take the consequences. And take the consequences.

Leaving him was less like leaving even the most simple of her friends in Flaw Valleys, and more like losing unfinished a manuscript, beautiful, absorbing and difficult, which she had long wanted to...

..when two friends discuss money, the third friend should invariably be asleep.

He can make you want to knock him down, if he feels like it, by simply saying "good morning". He possibly said simply "good morning" to Lord Culter. The difference was that, being his brother, Culter...

I wish to make my fortune with you.' 'Well, you can forget about that, for a start,' said Francis Crawford. 'And if your place in Paradise has been written, then for God's sake hang on to it. Because...

Kate won't be troubled. I don't know any gentlemen, anyway.''Thank you,' said Lymond.

I do admire efficiency,' said Marthe. 'But how tedious it can be in excess.

You have only to lift your hand,' Thorkel Fostri said. And after a moment, 'What else were you born for?''Why not happiness, like other men? Thorfinn said.'You have that,' said his foster-father. 'But...

O England,' said Kiaya Khátún. Her voice, mellow and strong, held an accent or a mingling of accents Philippa was unable to name. 'O England, the Hell of Horses, the Purgatory of Servants and the...

Self-knowledge is not sold on the Rialto. And if it were, few people would buy.

Jerott's hand increased its grip on her arm. 'He is an island with all its bridges wantonly severed. What hostage to evil,' said Jerott, poetic in his thumping displeasure, 'will this night's business...

Moving forward quietly to Jerott's side, Adam Blacklock had heard. 'Don't you understand? The authorities are afraid of them both,' he said gently. 'Why do you supose this cordon is here, which only...

You haven't enough artillery, have you?''Against you or the Germans?' said Lymond.

Though whether the mass murder of strangers for one's principles ranks higher in virtue than attacking one's neighbours for the hell of it is a point I'm glad I don't have to settle.

And at thirty-eight a brilliant exponent of arms and a knight of the great fighting and religious Order of St John, the Chevalier de Villegagnon had absolutely no use for common sense himself, but...

And as he followed after the Irishwoman, Margaret Erskine, most levelheaded of women, picked up a Palissy vase, looked at it earnestly and smashed it clean on the floor.

Whatever fascination Lymond held for her mother, it had no power at five in the morning.

It doesn't do my self-esteem much good though, does it?''Your self-esteem has had a lifetime of steady attention,' said Philippa abstractedly.

Don't you think you should retire again? The first retiral seems to have got mislaid.

Philippa allowed polite regret to inform every muscle. 'Whatever day it occurs,' she said, 'I feel I have a previous engagement.''May I congratulate you,' he said agreeably, 'on your evident...

Violence in nature is one thing, but among civilized mankind, what excuse is there?

Subject to intelligence, nothing is incalculable.

Habits are the ruin of ambition, of initiative, of imagination.

It was a tragic and annihilating war, in which intellect fought naked with intellect, and the blows fell not upon the mind but upon the soul.

There was a silence. 'You didn't as,' said Jerott at length. 'But I would have forgone even the body for the sake of the mind. And I would have claimed neither body nor mind, had I discovered a soul.

What does anyone want out of life? What kind of freak do you suppose I am? I miss books and good verse and decent talk. I miss women, to speak to, not to rape; and children, and men creating things...