Quotes About Deception
That night at Dumbarton was a classic of its kind. She had hopes still, I think, of enslaving me despite myself with her charms. And I probably thought the same. We both found we were mistaken. It had its moments; but she has the mind and morals of a jungle cat. She didn't enjoy meeting … another of the same.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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Nine-tenths of every attack is bluff. The art is to know when to call it.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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Well, get the coffer out, said Tobie roundly. You find his clean clothes and I'll cut his hair round his cap and wash his ears out. Then, when we get to the Palazzo Medici, you imitate his voice and I'll sit him on my knee and move his arms up and down. Where is the problem?
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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My dear Gaultier,' said Lymond. 'It will send the Shadow of God into transports. I suppose I've seen objects more grisly before, but it doesn't spring to mind where.… Twenty-four-carat gold, Jerott. Look. And studded with rubies like fish-roes.' 'Yes. I think he'll be pleased,' said Georges Gaultier. For the first time satisfaction, animation and even cheerfulness rang in his voice. 'Sickening, isn't it?
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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Julius rose to his feet. The towel dropped, showering cut brown hair over Monna Alessandra's elegant tiles. His hair, finely tailored, clung to a thick-boned face with slanting eyes and a blunt profile which would have looked well on a coin. Tobie, who had almost no hair, gazed at him sadly.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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Then she said, Thorfinn! quickly, and moved to him; but had hardly got to his side before he loosed his fingers and thumbs and plunged them down to the mattress like spear-points. No!Macbeth. Macbeth. Macbeth! the name reached her like sling-shot. Groa said, They are the same man. I should know. I married both.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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What is your principal characteristic, would you say?' 'Treacherousness,' said Danny, gloriously. 'That,' said Lymond pleasantly, 'is everyone's principal characteristic.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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His hair soft as a nestling's, his eyes graceless with malice, Lymond was watching him in a silver mirror.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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Five years ago your brother Lymond was found to have been selling his own country for years: he's been kicked from land to land committing every crime on the calendar and now he's back here, God forgive him, with filthier habits and a nastier mind than he set out with.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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Danny Hislop was not there, nor the artist called Blacklock. Riding between Lymond and the fresh-faced Knight of St John who did not like eagles, Chancellor asked after them. Ludovic d'Harcourt glanced at Lymond without answering. Lymond said, 'They are undergoing a course of correction. If in the event they are either correct or in the least chastened, I shall be surprised.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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Oh, Marigold!" Lymond spoke plaintively. "A silken tongue, a heart of cruelty. Don't berate us. We're only poor scoundrels—vagabonds—scraps of society; unlettered and untaught.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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If I were yourself, I would perhaps give him his head. He looks a meek enough child." "So did Heliogabalus at an early age," said Lymond. "And Attila and Torquemada and Nero and the man who invented the boot. The only thing they had in common was a cherubic adolescence. And red hair, of course, makes it worse.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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Don't wrest from me my repentance. A whoremonger, a haunter of stews, a hypocrite, a wretch and a maker of strife.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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You will not face Sybilla because alone of all of us, she does not know you are venal. She still thinks you care for Scotland and for us, and are prepared to think both more important than riches; for our sake to govern your ambition; for the boy's sake to master your emotions. And when she sees you——' 'She will know she was wrong,' Lymond said.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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All I gathered from that is that Francis Crawford is a raging harlot.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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You summon and you throw away. You treat love like a bird for the table … Like a pawn, now in frankincense, now discarded and thrown in the dirt. You don't know what love is, either of you. And God help us and you, if you ever find out.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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A lie is a broad and spacious and glittering thing, sweeping belief before it from its very grandeur. But the truth fits, like an old man cutting cloth in an attic.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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She rose. 'You mean,' Catherine d'Albon said, 'I have agreed to marry a libertine?' 'Everyone marries libertines,' Lymond said comfortably, rising and taking her elbow. 'But not everyone knows it beforehand.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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Words is but wind but dunts is the devil
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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I know,' said Danny Hislop. 'I want to see them being fond of one another. I want to see everybody brazening it out. And then I want to see what your petit François does to you when the party's over.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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Daniel Hislop, the son of the bishop?' 'The Bishop's bastard,' said Hislop, with a cold-eyed assumption of coyness. 'Sir. My lord. Jesus.' Lymond's eyes turned to him, open. Then changing position, he seated himself, and placed his hands gently on the table before him. 'Sir will do,' said Lymond calmly, 'unless you receive divine witness to the contrary.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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He never said what he meant. He never said what he meant.… All through their encounters, their clashes, their crossing of swords she had known that and learned a little to deal with it, and to translate, if only to herself, what lay under the stream of hurtful, facile words. And, suddenly, this time she felt panic, a seizure of fear so unexpected that she stared at him, quite unseeing, listening to the tone of the words. And then she saw what was behind it, and sat down.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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Do you think he will notice?' Danny said. 'I sometimes feel if I placed myself nude on the floor between the Voevoda and one of his meetings, he wouldn't even walk round me.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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Warfare and trickery. It is your natural element.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
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