Elizabeth squirmed on the hard wooden bench, and tried to ignore both her sore backside and her rumbling stomach. Why did the minister's sermons last so long? And why did the talk of sin always give h...
Richard looked at the bow-tips that twinkled in the sun, the arrows being slowly notched and pointing down the field at him. He flung his head back and dug the golden spurs of knighthood into his hors...
I would have drawn and quartered him, and I hope you do, said Richard, his eyes sparkling.
How can he be so cruel to me at times—and then like this? she thought. And again her awakening perceptions gave her the answer. He would hurt her himself, take pleasure in doing so, but he would not a...
They had dismounted, laughing, amorous, and Katherine on finding a fairy ring of mushrooms in the grove had cried that by means of this enchantment on Midsummer Eve she would bind her love to her for...
There was no such thing as pure happiness. How many years it took to learn that! Always some dark fretted thing which unbalanced the ease one had laboriously found.
The house of fame, he thought, is built on melting ice, not steel, and rumbles ever with a sound of rumors, while the goddess of fame is as false and capricious as her sister—Fortune.
She has something else - a great deal else, said Alice Perrers' soft laughing voice from the corner, and if you ladies are too stupid to see it, the men won't be. Thanks to God that the King is short-...
We must use a firm hand.
There was a man and a woman who came together naked and unashamed, proudly bestowing on each other the beauty of their bodies and thereby finding ineffable joy.
In that hushed hour between midnight and dawn when Morpheus’ sable hands touch the rosy finger tips of Aurora and even the fairies are slumbering on their flowery couches,
She had not, as yet, enough introspection to realize that part of his fascination for her had arisen from his unpredictability, and her conception of him as a mysterious being from a superior world wh...
Look, bimba—In my country we have a—how you say?—a proverb. Amare, cantare, mangiare.—Loving, singing, eating—these are God’s three gifts. You don’ need more.
God's will usually seemed to coincide with her father's, and against this partnership there was no hope of appeal.
Though she seemed made for the pleasures of the flesh, there yet was a sense of spiritual striving about her, and a healthiness of mind and body which pleased him who spent so much of his time with th...
Yes, Nicholas replied, in a bored voice. The name is Dutch. Dragonwyck, meaning place of the dragon. It derives from an Indian legend about a flying serpent whose eyes were fire and whose flaming brea...
Twas the moment deep When we are conscious of the secret dawn Amid the darkness that we feel is green . . . Thy face remembered is from other worlds, It has been died for, though I know not when, It h...
She had beauty still, the thinness of her flesh but exposed the grace of her bones and sinews, but the great brooding eyes were circled by umber shadows and the thick black lashes seemed too heavy for...
In jewels and brocades and a whirl of musk, Alice flounced triumphantly out of her chariot, her three little dogs frisking and barking after her. She raised her thickly painted face to the Duke.
If I should never see him again—she thought, Blessed Mother, how could I live, and yet it was the fear of seeing him again which had driven her to this desperate haste. The fear that if he were there...