Religion in recent years has become a political sport, and politicians are more skilful than honest men at extracting themselves from disasters.
Raveand Rhamnusia, Goddes of Dispyte,’ said Lymond acidly. ‘I am trying to get you home, vide the shiten shepherd and the clene shepe, with your woolly chops spotless. The only drawback to date is tha...
Pray don’t allow the shock of it all to confuse you, she said. Popular resurrections are a tedious pastime of Francis’s.
Poor bloody bastard: he hasn’t a chance, has he? Kicked from cradle to whorehouse; his mother slaughtered by Gabriel, his father propped up by opium.
Perhaps for one second you would sit on the lid of your irreducible ego and listen to me. I regard you, masculine or feminine, as the greatest genius the world has ever produced. I agree you have a su...
Perfectly prepared to be an eavesdropper but unwilling to look like one, Philippa backed quickly towards the door and collided, hard, with an unseen person striding forward equally fast into the room....
Patriotism, said Lymond, like honesty is a luxury with a very high face value which is quickly pricing itself out of the spiritual market altogether.[...] It is an emotion as well, and of course the e...
One escapes; but one always has to come back. I found too I disliked not being in command of myself.
Oh, well. I don’t mind helping you to feel guilty if you must. On the other hand, I should point out that of all our various encounters, today is the only time you have favoured me with two civil word...
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.
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 w...
No. I won’t. I won’t bend my knee, or kiss your charming shoes either. I may possibly fall flat on my face, but that will be quite inadvertent.
My son ... my son,' said Francis Crawford before the blurred, failing candles, their light searching over his disordered, bent head and closed eyes and the long, scarred lines of his hands, laid flat...
My God, he must be a good man with his fists.’‘Lymond?’ said Danny sweetly.‘Lord Culter. I assume,’ Ludovic said. ‘At least, he was the last person up the stairs before Yeroffia. What did they quarrel...
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 the...
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...
Meanwhile Sir Wat Scott of Buccleuch was riding westward from Edinburgh, free at last of the Governor’s councils, and leaving behind him his good friend Tom Erskine, a distraught smuggler, and a depre...
Marthe said suddenly, ‘How many souls on this earth call you Francis? Three? Or perhaps four?’For a moment he looked at her unsmiling; and for a moment she wished, angrily that she could recall the qu...
Marthe said dryly, ‘Philippa wishes only to say thank you, and so also do I. They say in Italy, don’t they, that the boat will sink that carries neither monk, nor student, nor whore.… How good that we...
Lymond said, very softly, in English, ‘This is part of a plan to escape. Pretend to strike me, and listen.’‘You stinking catamite,’ said Jerott; and with all his considerable strength launched a blow...