Edward Seymour says, ‘You should have been a bishop, Cromwell.’‘Edward,’ he says, ‘I should have been Pope.
And they say [money's] the root of all evil. Well, Protestants say that. Catholics know better.
The old always think the world is getting worse; it is for the young, equipped with historical facts, to point out that, compared with 1509, or even 1939, life in 2009 is sweet as honey.
[The princess] looks out and sees the humble musician with his lute. But unless the musician turns out to be a prince in disguise, this story cannot end well.
When no one else could see, he could see: and that is what it means to be a king.
Were you ever at the cathedral in Chartres? You walk the labyrinth, he says, set into the pavement, and it seems there is no sense in it. But if you follow it faithfully it leads you straight to the c...
We passed the Irish club, and the florist’s with its small stiff pink-and-white carnations in a bucket, and the drapers called ‘Elvina’s’, which displayed in its window Bear Brand stockings and knife-...
The main thing is, the constraints have come off style. What we are saying now is that the Revolution does not proceed in a pitiless, forward direction, its politics and its language becoming ever mor...
The ladies of Italy, seemingly carefree, wore constructions of iron beneath their silks. It took infinite patience, not just in negotiation, to get them of of their clothes.
The first years were spent in cleaning Muriel, in reconciling herself to her existence. Evelyn wanted to be alone in the house; the house filled up, more than she had dreaded. After some time, Muriel...
The Revolution is your bride, he said. As the Church is the Bride of Christ.
Some would think that it ought to come in the course of nature to a woman of thirty-six, a wife and mother. A little calm, a little quiet within - little chance. Even after childbearing, there is bloo...
So often in council he has taken Katherine’s part, as if he were one of her appointed lawyers. ‘You make this argument, my lords,’ he has said, ‘but the dowager princess will allege…’ And ‘Katherine w...
No rational man could worship a God so simply vengeful
In England there is no mercy for the poor. You pay for everything, even a broken neck.472
If all the old stories are to be believed, and some people, let us remember, do believe them, then our king is one part bastard archer, one part hidden serpent, one part Welsh, and all of him in debt...
If Mary's blood is Spanish, at least it is royal. And at least she can walk straight and has control of her bowels.
I think the wolves all died when the great forests were cut down. That howling you hear is only the Londoners.
Há para tudo uma estação: uma estação para passar fome e uma estação para roubar.
High spirits are a foolish waste in those destined for the chain gang of marriage and the mill