But what would happen … I mean, what would be so awful … if they did meet up? Why, it would be like the West, Samira said. There would be harassment. People would be all the time having love affair.
Bargain all you like. Consign yourself to the hangman if you must. The people don't give a fourpenny fuck.512
And the more the king snips and carps, the more do his petitioners seek out the company of Cromwell, so unfailing in his amiable courtesy. At home, Jo comes to him looking perplexed. She
He wonders, why should my wife worry about women who have no sons? Possibly it's something women do: spend time imagining what it's like to be each other.
Peroration. He had left his opponents with nothing to say and nowhere to
Crenellations, the scarlet and the pale, the airy stone and the
You said,' Camille protested, 'that when you wanted to get on terms with Gabrielle you cultivated her mother. It's true, everybody saw you doing it, boasting in Italian and rolling your eyes and doing...
You know what it's like when a cart overturns in the street? Everybody you meet has witnessed it. They saw a man's leg sliced clean off. They saw a woman gasp her last. They saw the goods looted, thie...
Some say the Tudors transcend this history, bloody and demonic as it is: that they descend from Brutus through the line of Constantine, son of St Helena, who was a Briton. Arthur, High King of Britain...
One fear creates a dereliction, the offense brings on a greater fear, and there comes a point where the fear is too great and the human spirit just gives up and a child wanders off numb and directionl...
Once, in Thessaly, there was a poet called Simonides. He was commissioned to appear at a banquet, given by a man called Scopas, and recite a lyric in praise of his host. Poets have strange vagaries, a...
Once they were young men of esprit, young men of élan. A quarter of a century has passed and they are grey or balding, flabby or paunchy, gone in the fetlock or missing some fingers, but still as arro...
Mirabeau: If you have been told to clear us from this hall, you must ask for orders to use force. We shall leave our seats only at bayonet point. The King can cause us to be killed; tell him we all aw...
Inside his copy of The Social Contract he keeps a letter from a young Picard, an enthusiast called Antoine Saint-Just: I know you, Robespierre, as I know God, by your works.When he suffers, as he does...
I resent you— Robespierre said. His words were lost. The People, he shouted, are everywhere good, and if they obstruct the Revolution—even, for example, at Toulon—we must blame their leaders.What are...
He would have explained, if he’d known what sort of explanation Wykys would understand. I gave up fighting because, when I lived in Florence, I looked at frescoes every day? He said, I found an easier...
He draws a line under his conclusions. Says, 'Gregory, what should I do about the great worm?' 'Send a commission against it, sir,' the boy says. 'It must be put down.' He gives his son a long look. '...
Elijah told Ahab that the dogs would lick his blood, and so it came to pass, as you would imagine, since only the successful prophets are remembered
But who would hold up his head, if people judged us by what we were like at twenty?398
But the nation’s business must go forward, and this is how: an act to give Wales members of Parliament, and make English the language of the law courts, and to cut from under them the powers of the lo...