Right? said Lymond. You pathetic, maladroit nincompoop, you’re never right.
Put him, blindfold, into a closed room anywhere in the world, and he could tell if Sybilla was with him. It had to do, perhaps, with her scent. To him, it was more: a breath from the sweetness and pea...
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...
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...
Patriotism, said Lymond again. It’s an opulent word, a mighty key to a royal Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. Patriotism; loyalty; a true conviction that of all the troubled and striving world, the soil of one’s fa...
One escapes; but one always has to come back. I found too I disliked not being in command of myself.
On the day that his grannie was killed by the English, Sir William Scott the Younger of Buccleuch was at Melrose Abbey, marrying his aunt.
Oh, ye’ve a temper,’ said Archie consideringly. ‘And ye had a rare old time losing it, and ye were like enough justified at that. But take a thought, too. Are ye to accuse Graham Malett in the law cou...
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.
Of all the homes I have known, yours has been a shining model of wisdom and kindness and honesty. For what you and your mother have done in the past, for me and for the child, I owe you a profound deb...
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...
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, said Francis Crawford in English, smiling cordially and shaking his hand. 'Caffa and purled lace and pinking, and a butt on him like one of Shah Mahmút th Ghaznêrides' elephants. How is Marthe...
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...
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...
Man is a being of varied, manifold and inconstant nature. And woman, by God, is a match for him.
Like the narration of those who preach to those who do not wish to hear, my story has failed to excite anyone. They don't believe me.