Quotes from Dorothy Dunnett

Nostradamus said, according to Archie, that the Gods sell the goods that they give us. We had been shown a fine instrument. But the bow could be overlong bent; the harp lose its voice if its strings were not loosened.' 'I hope he said so in Francis's hearing. Poor Archie,' said Marthe. 'Did he say what should be loosened? His morals?

Some love for a living,' said Lymond. 'And some kill.

Philippa thinks of you, as she thinks of me, as a rather run-down institution for indigent imbeciles.

In a lifetime of empty rooms, this was another.

Let us save everyone's faces,' Lymond said, 'while we can. And before Master Buchanan is hurled to the floor by either Nicolas or a thunderbolt from the late Copernicus.

Someone sobbed. Someone said, 'It is finished. Remember me no longer; or my children, or my children's children.'

Men live, not while they breathe, but while they live well.

A great many inferior people, Mr Crawford, have helped you over the years in your well-publicized career of adversity, but you mustn't be surprised if the circle begins to diminish. To go by what happened this evening, the man who has finally emerged from it all isn't worth helping.

He lived in her, his disciple. For her to think, now, as he would have done. And to act always thereafter.

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.

Philippa. You gave your husband a brevet to absent himself from his responsibilities. I have cancelled it.

My dear man,' Philippa said. 'It seems to me that you have no spirit left but the spirit of resentment.

Men fall short of your desire, and so you abandon men. The Crown falls short of your expectations, and you abandon the Crown. A leader with no following is an aerolite unloosed, M. Crawford, its power blinding and blistering where it wantonly falls, until it burns itself out. To take a puny man and make him great is your gift.

Scorpio,' Lymond said, 'does not caper. He stings. We are damned, as the man says, of nature: so conceaved and borne as a serpent is a serpent, and a tode a tode, and a snake a snake by nature …' He looked at her again, a little wryly. 'And you, I suppose, are the Crab. It doesn't matter. If you want to bite, bite.

Men throughout Scotland and over the narrow seas who lived different lives because they had known him. To carry his bright legacy into the future, he did not require to have children. No one, once they had met him, could remain the same.

They told me that if I didn't come back, they would force you to marry?' In the plain, sensible face, the brown eyes were derisive. 'Is that why you came back?' said Kate Somerville. 'No. I knew you could handle it.' 'Thank you,' said Kate.

How nice to go through life being male, pretty and wanted.

Is it for this thou wast created? You were wrong, Jerott, wrong; and Sybilla was right. Every day, every hour he lived mattered. He belonged to life: it should have been granted him.

If they thought their sovereignty worth keeping, the handful of lords who divided Scotland between them must unite. And unite before religious division caught and struck them apart for ever.

I devised a somewhat arbitrary way out of my own difficulties that evening.

My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi. My beloved is dead.

You tried to …? How?' 'In the time-honoured fashion,' he said. 'My cuffs are too tight to gratify you with a view.

It's time you thought less of your emotional feather bed and more of other people's.

Lymond ha vuelto