Where are the links of the chain ... joining us to the past?
The prospect of watching the Crawford family at grips with itself was something that, blissfully, he wanted very much for his birthday.
The guiding hand at one’s pony; the voice at one’s porridge bowl; the splendid athlete one watched from one’s books in the cold tower window, while outside in the sunshine he rode at the ring, threw h...
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...
She may be hoping for Lug of the Long Arms but what she has is the family Crawford, qui peut de tous bois faire flèches in order to sit in the butts and shoot hearty rounds at each other.
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 l...
Philippa’s letter, from an afflicted conscience, was not very much longer. … if I don’t look for him, no one else will. You know I’m sorry. But I couldn’t leave that little thing to wither away by its...
Philippa … release me from my promise.’She put her hands over her mouth, and then took them away. ‘I can’t. I can’t.’He had pulled his own hands down, looking still at the stool, his face quite turned...
Philippa Somerville was annoyed. To her friends the Nixons, who owned Liddel Keep, and with whom Kate had deposited her for one night, she had given an accurate description of Sir William Scott of Kin...
Not to every young girl is it given to enter the harem of the Sultan of Turkey and return to her homeland a virgin.
Mother of God, Francis Crawford of Lymond, you've made a slut of your art, have you not, as well as a whore of yourself?
Long ago, returning from some turbulent sequence of misdeeds, the younger, beloved son of the house of Culter would rap at the door of his mother’s chamber, and be admitted, and closing the door, woul...
It was your brother. He must be insane.Not insane, dear. Sybilla, speaking gently, contradicted. Not insane. But magnificently drunk, I fear.
It was a piece of advice only, and aimed at myself as much, I suppose, as at you.—For those of easy tongues, she said. Remember, some live all their lives without discovering this truth; that the nobl...
Immoderation, Mariotta, is a thief of money and intestinal joy, but who’d check it? Not I. Here I am, weeping soft tears of myrrh, to prove it.
I wish to God, said Gideon with mild exasperation, that you’d talk—just once—in prose like other people.
I tell you that whatever infatuation you have fallen into, you cannot keep that man at your side. He belongs where he belongs and he will arrive there, no matter how deep you bury him. Best free him a...
I have said the intellect is all that can matter. I haven’t said it is easy—or painless … to rid oneself of all that is left.
I have been told to live in Scotland, and I shall do it, but I doubt if it will be to Scotland’s benefit. There are handicaps, I have found, more crippling than blindness. Even the part of me that did...
I do not exist. What you have in your hand is my death certificate.