Dorothy Dunnett Quotes

Man is a being of varied, manifold and inconstant nature. And woman, by God, is a match for him.

But I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands.

And habits are hell's own substitute for good intentions. Habits are the ruin of ambition, of initiative , of imagination. They're the curse of marriage and the after-bane of death.

After I convinced them that I was a harmless novelist, I actually got them to give me a tour of the harem - which is usually off limits for tourists.

I would give you my soul in a blackberry pie; and a knife to cut it with.

Look up . . . and see them. The teaching stars, beyond worship and commonplace tongues.

But it's also because of something personal. My mother and father met while playing chess, so I've always had a fondness for the game. If it weren't for chess, I might not be here.

Where are the links of the chain ... joining us to the past?

He regards boredom, I observe, as the One and Mighty Enemy of his soul. And will succeed in conquering it, I am sure—if he survives the experience.

So she was on her own, Kate thought, and instilled all the friendly helpfulness she could into her next question. “Excuse me, but are you the bad company young Mr. Scott has got into?

It seems to me,’ said Philippa prosaically, ‘that on the whole we run more risks with Mr Crawford’s protection than without it.

Facts are the soil from which the story grows. Imagination is a last resort.

Today,’ said Lymond, ‘if you must know, I don’t like living at all. But that’s just immaturity boggling at the sad face of failure. Tomorrow I’ll be bright as a bedbug again.

Lack of genius never held anyone back. Only time wasted on resentment and daydreaming can do that.

Verily, God hath eighteen thousand worlds; and verily, your world is one of them, and this its bright axle-tree.

Depose him,’ said Will Scott, astonished. ‘The Grand Master’s holy office terminates with his life.’ ‘And can nobody think of an answer to that?’ said Will Scott.

It was one of the occasions when Lymond asleep wrecked the peace of mind of more people than Lymond awake.

A man of over thirty might be held to be at the height of his powers, but not necessarily of his wisdom.

And the English army, wheeling, started south at a gallop over the hill pass into Ettrick, followed by twenty men and eight hundred sheep in steel helmets.

Repressively, Lymond himself answered. “I dislike being discussed as if I were a disease. Nobody ‘got’ me,” he said.

Fools make news, and wise men carry it.

Music, the knife without a hilt.

If I can’t be personal, I don’t want to argue,” said his hostess categorically. “I may be missing your points, but you’re much too busy dodging mine.

I wish to God,” said Gideon with mild exasperation, “that you’d talk—just once—in prose like other people.

My dear boy, in Ireland the midwife uses one hand to hold the baby's best fighting arm from the font water, and grips its jaws with the other lest the goes to litigation about it. Says O'LiamRoe

You might, without my crediting it, fall deeply in love and forever, with some warped hunchback whelped in the gutter. I should equally stop you from taking him.

Words is but wind but dunts is the devil

And habits are hell's own substitute for good intentions. Habits are the ruin of ambition, of initiative, of imagination. They're the curse of marriage and the after-bane of death.