Quotes from Robert Harris

old men complaining that the world is going to the dogs.

I decided that the ten percent of the population who worry about these things would be appalled by the report, assuming they ever managed to locate it. The remaining ninety would probably just shrug.

Looking out from his window, he felt he had been granted a glimpse of a great truth, one that had been whispering at his conscience for many years: that God was not to be pressed into service merely to suit the needs of men, however righteous they believed their cause to be; that such presumption was itself a sin.

How much longer, Catilina, will you try our patience

El arte de la vida consiste en saber enfrentarnos a los problemas a medida que surgen en lugar de amargarnos la existencia preocupándonos antes de que aparezcan.

What are the only weapons I possess, Tiro? he asked me, and then he answered his own question. These. he said, gesturing at his books. Words. Caesar and Pompey have their soldiers, Crassus his wealth, Clodius his bullies on the street. My only legions are my words. By language I rose, and by language I shall survive.

You are a bird of ill-omen, thought Kelso. You circle the world and wherever you land there is famine and death and destruction: in an earlier and less credulous age, the local citizens would have gathered at the first sight of you and driven you off with stones -

Nowadays, of course, most senators employ a slave or two two out their speeches; I have even heard of some who have no idea of what they are going to say until the next is place in front of them; how these fellows can call themselves statesman defeats me

Legat was praying that Hartmann would be there. He was not sure what he could offer God in return, but it would be something, he promised Him—a different life, a fresh start, a gesture equal to the age.

that pleasure is the beginning and end of living happily

But clever people all make one mistake. They all think everyone else is stupid. And everyone isn't stupid. They just take a bit more time, that's all.

All that will remain of us is what is written down.

Rome is not defined by rivers, or mountains, or even seas; Rome is not a question of blood, or race, or religion; Rome is an ideal. Rome is the highest embodiment of liberty and law that mankind has yet achieved in the ten thousand years since our ancestors came down from those mountains and learned how to live as communities under the rule of law.

He was unable to get it out of his mind. Was it really possible that he had spent the past thirty years worshipping the church rather than God? Because that, in essence, was the accusation Benitez had leveled against him.

There are few forces in politics harder to resist than a feeling that something is inevitable

It sounded legitimate when one put it that way – governing through the people: what could be fairer? – but really 'the people' were the mob

But as Cicero had long tried to convince him, a speech is a performance, not a philosophical discourse: it must appeal to the emotions more than to the intellect

Their souls were contagious. ... Bloodsuckers, spiders and vampires: that was what Lenin called them.

Cosa si può fare, disse, se si dedica la vita a smascherare i criminali, e a poco a poco ci si accorge che i veri criminali sono quelli per cui si lavora? Cosa si può fare quando tutti ti dicono di non preoccuparti perché tanto non ci puoi fare niente ed è successo molto tempo fa? Adesso Charlie lo guardava in un modo diverso. Immagino che si perda la ragione. Oppure può succedere di peggio. La si può trovare.

Violence is Inevitable.

She had the resigned indifference of extreme old age. Buildings and empires rose and fell. It snowed. It stopped snowing. People came and went. One day death would come for her, and she would not find that surprising either, and she would not care -

at that instant i knew there was no horror the world could offer - no war, no genocide, no famine, no childhood cancer - to which Sidney Kroll would not see the funny side

the likeness was stricking. Not exact, of course - no man ever looks exactly like his father - but there was something there, no doubt about it, even with the younger man's beard and straggling hair. Something in the cast of the eyes and the bone structure, perhaps, or in the play of the expression: a kind of ponderous agility, a genetic shadow that was beyond the skills of any actor.

These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale -