You are offered love and won’t accept it except on your own terms. That isn’t tragic. It’s the word you’ve just mentioned—it’s childish.
You are not coming.’‘But——’ said Christopher.‘You heard your father,’ said Killingworth. ‘You can’t hold enough liquor.’‘Can you?’ said Christopher, goaded.‘No,’ said George Killingworth, after a mome...
Yes, gentlemen: said Philippa impatiently, and seizing a stout wooden heading axe, let it fall on the next person who passed.It was Lymond. He dropped to his knees, his hands covering the nape of his...
With Jerott Blyth, innkeepers never shirked the proper discharge of their duties. To the doggedness of his Scottish birth, his long residence in France and his profession of arms had lent a particular...
Why?’ said Philippa. ‘For suffering what you have suffered for three months?’ And felt the veils rend about her, for she had broken the unwritten law: it must not be uttered. It must not be uttered, o...
Why not? I thought we were speaking of death and dishonour? You would advance to your grave and I should join the ranks of your numerous dead: Diccon and Salablanca, Tosh and Christian Stewart; Oonagh...
Why do you call him M. d’Harcourt? You called Jerott Jerott.’‘I called Jerott a great deal worse than that.
What’s wrong? Has Francis been rude? Then you must try to overlook it. I know you wouldn’t think so, but he is thoroughly upset by Tom Erskine’s death; and when Francis is troubled he doesn’t show it,...
What’s poor Richard ever done to you except get himself born first?The blue eyes were speculative. Ill-calculated, he agreed. But not necessarily final.
What was original sin? Was it more than an arbitrary pattern set in the loom, of talents and weaknesses, picked out from the warp of one’s forebears?
What to do when attacked at sea, lessons one to ten. They had spent their first morning at sea being trained, remorselessly, by Francis Crawford for this precise event. ‘I know what to do,’ said Phili...
What does anyone want out of life? What kind of freak do you suppose I am? I miss books and good verse and decent talk. I miss women, to speak to, not to rape; and children, and men creating things in...
What a hell of a welcome. I’m sorry. But there’s so much still to do outside before the weather closes, and we have to tackle all the dreary minutiæ on weapons and theory where all your knightly warri...
What I cannot control is the stupid man, launched upon a war which is against his material interests. And there is no scavenger of the air, or beast of the earth, or ooze of the sea which will offend...
We are here. We will work together for what purpose seems to us right. We will work with calm, and with tolerance and, please God, with saving laughter.‘We know something of men. We know of evil, and...
We all die,’ said Nostradamus. ‘The man you love. The man who loves you. The man you married. But because of you there will be something, I promise you, by which men will know Francis Crawford has bee...
War had given Francis his respite, and success had brought him his final reward: the freedom he wished from his marriage. The licence, if he desired it, to go back to Russia. The knowledge, one suppos...
Verily, God hath eighteen thousand worlds; and verily, your world is one of them, and this its bright axle-tree.
Truth’s nothing but falsehood with the edges sharpened up, and ill-tempered at that: no repair, no retraction, no possible going back once it’s out.
To see what I would say,’ Lymond said and smiling, destroyed all his own controls as they looked at him. ‘She had no intention of going. But if you hadn’t come in, who knows what she would have learne...