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 wise prince is not always the most popular prince;
It's all very well planning what you will do in six months, what you will do in a year, but it's no good at all if you don't have a plan for tomorrow.
He’s not real I can take his space. As I get into bed beside him, the strongman vanishes. I pick up my diary and record him: was there, isn’t any more. This happened in early July, 2010. I had surgery...
You know I'm not a man with whom you can have inconsequential conversations. I cannot split myself into two, one your friend and the other the king's servant.
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-...
To gentle pressure, King Henry capitulated; the White Rose, aged twenty-four, was taken out into God’s light and air, in order to have his head cut off. But there is always another White Rose; the Pla...
There is no need for unanimity, Saint- Just said. It would have been desirable, but let’s get on. There are only two signatures wanting, I think, besides those who have refused. Citizen Lacoste, you n...
There is a world beyond this black world. There is a world of the possible. A world where Anne can be queen is a world where Cromwell can be Cromwell. He sees it; then he doesn’t. The moment is fleeti...
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...
People said— though this felt like a heresy— that they had seen Camille make Robespierre laugh.
I was (an am) unsure about how I am related to my old self, or to myself from year to year. The hormonal profile of an individual determines much of the manifest personality. If you skew the endocrine...
I think the wolves all died when the great forests were cut down. That howling you hear is only the Londoners.
I think now that this is the great division between people. There are people who find life hard and those who find it easy. There are those who have a natural, in-built, expectation of happiness, and...
I never know why Hope is accounted a virtue, Camille said. It seems so selfserving.
I have written books and I cannot unwrite them. I cannot unbelieve what i believe. I cannot unlive my life
Hérault, Fabre thinks: and his mind drifts back—as it tends to, these days— to the Café du Foy. He’d been giving readings from his latest—Augusta was dying the death at the Italiens—and in came this h...
His speech is low and rapid, his manner assured; he is at home in courtroom or waterfront, bishop’s palace or inn yard. He can draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, stop a street fight, furnis...
He, Cromwell, says to his visitors, just tell them this, and tell them loud: to each monk, one bed: to each bed, one monk. Is that so hard for them?
He will remember his first sight of the open sea: a gray wrinkled vastness, like the residue of a dream.