Quotes from Dorothy Dunnett

An unheroic and unpublicized scene.

At the end of life, parent and kinsman are as a blind man set to look after a burning lamp.

I think you might come to forget, too, that life is more than a science.

You rode sixty miles through the night for a brother who doesn't exist. I haven't been here for four years. I have been growing and changing, somewhere else, with different people, speaking a different language. The old ties are gone: my family wouldn't recognize me: what in God's name do you think I could find to say to them?

Venice….I think you may promise the Tsar what you like, for I do not think for a moment that Mary Tudor will agree. The Tsar needs munitions, but he needs trade and communication with the west even more.

Don't wrest from me my repentance. A whoremonger, a haunter of stews, a hypocrite, a wretch and a maker of strife.

He is not immutable. No man can be.

There was no place for him there or in Scotland, compared to the one he held in Russia. And although Diccon Chancellor once had thought, wistfully, of a land where likeminded friends might meet and might talk and might make new and astounding discoveries, free of fear, he knew that it was not to be found yet in England.

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.

our childhood is over now, Marshal. Mankind can survive very well without an intimate study of your susceptibilities but not, unfortunately, without your other functions and talents. Do you think I bring any child into the world to live for himself alone?

Richard, I am not worth anyone's heartache.' 'I know that,' Richard said. 'But she does not.' 'She will have to learn,' Lymond said.

Is that your whole measure? To shirk what is difficult? To escape to safety, like a strawberry-preacher, when your friends are in danger? My gentleman: if you run from me now, I will brand you and your sister in France, in Scotland, in Midculter and out of it for what you were: rotten stock.

Then I tell you,' Sybilla said, 'that you have no leave to die. Nor have you leave to desert the race you belong to. I want your word that from this moment, you live.

There was a space, during which, of the five men and women standing or kneeling about Francis Crawford, only one watched him. Then Lymond said clearly, 'On my honour, I promise it.

Danny Hislop touched his horse to ride, busily, beside Adam's. 'He remembered an appointment?' 'He remembered something you have forgotten,' Adam said. 'That this is his country.

I could not have done that. I fear nothing and no one. I respect nothing and no one. But I could not have done that.' 'You have done it,' Jerott said. 'It is easy to do it, out of hatred. But you are right. I know of no one else on earth who could have done it out of love.

He did not know, but could be told, that to her, his reasons for abstaining were baseless. That nothing mattered but this: that the moon was here, in her fingers.

It was a miracle, and it partook of the first property of miracles. It should never have been performed.

I'm not in St Mary's because I like it. I am embarked spellbound on a study of devil-worship.

You mean my reputation is ruined? No wealthy gentlemen suing for my favours?' 'No respectable wealthy gentlemen suing for your favours,' he said.

But you loved my father,' he said. 'And Eloise's, of course. What was he like?' 'Like you,' Sybilla said. 'And worth all this?' Lymond said. 'Yes,' said Sybilla. 'Don't you, of all people, know what love can do?

But I,' said Lymond, 'am one of the new apostles, seeking nothing but voluptuousness and human pleasures, and abusing the world.…

Since I hear you are leaving, I have come to put certain matters before you. They are important. If I were a different manner of person, no doubt I should do more than this; I should plead, and I should cajole. I mean you to understand that if I cannot do that, it is not because I don't think them worthy. I wish you to listen to them and I will accept the answer you give me. I should only warn you, Francis, that on these matters, I will not brook lightness or insolence.

habits are hell's own substitute for good intentions. Habits are the ruin of ambition, of initiative, of imagination. They're the curse of marriage and the after-bane of death." Katherine