Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Dorothy Dunnett, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Dorothy Dunnett quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 211 Dorothy Dunnett quotes for you to read and share.

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Think for yourselves for a change. You've been pedlars: go and be merchants. You've been mercenaries: go and find something of your own to defend. You've finished teething and there's the world: crack it open if you can. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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He will not, I think, find it logical to live with what he has done today. I have told him that you are his responsibility. While he believes that, he will continue to protect you. I tell you this, so that you will understand what is happening. He will measure his life by your helplessness. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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A smile, bracketing his still mouth, spread like bane over Lymond's pale face. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I prefer a society which accepts that I have no choice, and does not pretend that I have. I prefer a God who does what he wills, and rules as he desires, and enjoins on me not to prevent anything against its destiny. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Oh, Marigold!" Lymond spoke plaintively. "A silken tongue, a heart of cruelty. Don't berate us. We're only poor scoundrels - vagabonds - scraps of society; unlettered and untaught. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Will he?" said Lymond. "Will you, Marigold?"

Brilliant, youthful face confronted restless one.

A little, malicious smile crossed the Master's face.

"Oh, no, he won't," said Lymond confidently. "He's going to be a naughty, naughty rogue like you and me. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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We'll do it,' said Will Scott comfortably, shouting over the tumult. 'If it's no more than an hour, we'll do it.'

'Christ, I believe you're sorry, you flaming maniac,' said Lymond. 'Don't I keep telling you that this is bloody childishness, and don't you keep agreeing? -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Nobility on earth may be earned by the sword, but nobility of the soul must be sought in stony ways and through hard endeavor. I have to tell you to rejoice that you have been chosen. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I wish to God," said Gideon with mild exasperation, "that you'd talk - just once - in prose like other people. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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We've had a deal of bad poetry, haven't we? Suggesting the climax to this thrilling and literary spectacle. The Olla Podrida, my sweet-hearts, will now be set on the fire. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Not to every young girl is it given to enter the harem of the Sultan of Turkey and return to her homeland a virgin. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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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. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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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 supposed, that, severed from Philippa, he could allow the past to lie in peace, and cease troubling him. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Lack of genius never held anyone back. Only time wasted on resentment and daydreaming can do that. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I will give you to Catherine. I will not give you to a hole in the ground. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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She got in, as she had persuaded Jerott Blyth to bring her half across France, by force of logic, a kind of flat-chested innocence and the doggedness of a flower-pecker attacking a strangling fig. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Good God, here am I with stockings in either hand, panting towards restitution. I merely require you to keep my soul out of the general conversation.'

'And your brother's soul?' said James Stewart. He was drawling again.

'I understood,' said Lymond, 'that you had that in hand. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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In Rome there is a pathological shortage of small coins. For change, the little shops tend to use candy. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Immoderation, Mariotta, is a thief of money and intestinal joy, but who'd check it? Not I. Here I am, weeping soft tears of myrrh, to prove it. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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And as he followed after the Irishwoman, Margaret Erskine, most levelheaded of women, picked up a Palissy vase, looked at it earnestly and smashed it clean on the floor. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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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, he just goes and makes life wretched for somebody. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Modern war is fought by a number of strong, sweaty horsemen with constipation, who have their eyes on power, on wealth and on glory, and who obey the rules just when it pleases them. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Haven't I been worth five years' excellent gossip to you? Are you not all waiting agog to see me seize my sister-in-law by the hair? When I think of it, damn it, I'm a public benefactor. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Tobie. Unless I'm giving off steam, behave normally. I remember what to do. One foot in front of the other, but not both at the same time unless I'm a robin. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Your husband appears to possess an uncanny gift for seducing his enemies. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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As a man, this child would be one's offering to the future races of men. The burden of his upbringing, wherever it fell: however tiresome or onerous, was of no importance compared with his living grasp of the future. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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There is a Russian proverb,' Nepeja said. 'Beat your shuba, and it will be warmer; beat your wife and she shall be sweeter.'

There was a brief silence, while his hearers considered the analogy. 'Beat your brother and he shall be deader?' at length Danny said. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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The trouble with Austin was that he believed so deeply in the chivalrous virtues that he found it impossible to refer to them. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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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. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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We're all runts and bastards of one sort or another. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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She looked,' said Alec Guthrie dryly, 'like a clever woman who was not unaware that five ill-dressed passers-by were displaying an unhealthy interest in her personal life. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Be kind to her when she comes back. Her love is not only for children but for humanity. She will be a good-hearted and magnificent zealot one day. As her mother is now.
Goodbye, Kate. And below he had signed as he rarely did, with his Christian name. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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It was one of the occasions when Lymond asleep wrecked the peace of mind of more people than Lymond awake. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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It was the only field, so far, in which the Pearl of Fortune had shown any precocity, other than the feat of keeping her head, her reason and her sense of the ridiculous amid conditions of civilized lunacy. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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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. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Jenny Fleming merely looked exasperated. 'That young man,' she said, 'ought to be plucked out of his pride and impaled on a thornbush. He introduced me to someone as the Controller of the King's Beam, last time we met.' Which at least had the merit of making her daughter laugh, if a little wildly. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I want you to slip it under Mademoiselle d'Albon's chamber door. If she opens it and throws an axe at you, come and tell me. If not, you may go back to bed. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Subject to intelligence, nothing is incalculable. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Acrostics in French or acrostics in Hebrew were still Greek to him. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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And deep within him, missing its accustomed tread, his heart paused, and gave one single stroke, as if on an anvil. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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She wouldn't send anyone, nor would she take anyone with her. She organizes witches' Sabbaths every full moon,' explained Philippa tartly. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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My son took many years to learn the simple truth. You cannot love any one person adequately until you have made friends with the rest of the human race also. Adult love demands qualities which cannot be learned living in a vacuum of resentment. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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There was a silence. 'You didn't as,' said Jerott at length. 'But I would have forgone even the body for the sake of the mind. And I would have claimed neither body nor mind, had I discovered a soul. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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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? -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Standing safely on the opposite bank with her dry maid, her dry escort, and a company of streaming horsemen, Philippa said scathingly, 'That's men for you. Cover the lady's retreat, the book says. A hundred years ago, maybe. And what stopped you from coming with me just now? I can swim, you know. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Our powder and arrows are going to run out on us some time. And so are our food and water and joie de vivre and good books and everything. Why not walk out now and get made into somebody's favourite slave? -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I prize freedom of the mind above freedom of the body. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I hope never to have to do that to you again. I hope one day you will forgive me. Try to remember, just at this moment, that my trade calls for acting. Try to remember, Richard, as I have told you, that because of your own honesty I can't confide in you. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I think it would be truer to say,' Philippa said, 'that both of us at the time had our reasons for hurting you. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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For how long can one maintain total vigilance?

For how long can love last, in isolation, without sinking crushed beneath its own pressure? -- Dorothy Dunnett
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One knows, when all one's life one has walked in dangerous places, when the silence is that of ambush and when the silence is that of emptiness. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I see,' said Jerott slowly. 'You've thought it all out.'

'That's what I do,' said Lymond. 'I sit on my brood-patch and think. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Why not,' said Gaultier viciously, 'play chess?'

It silenced Lymond. His head went back as if he had been struck, the indrawn air caught in his throat. He said nothing more. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I once heard a man speak, who had understanding, and the promise of vision. He was called the Master of Culter. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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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. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Philippa Somerville, standing back a little, did not withdraw her arm. In her white face, a shadow of motherly irritation appeared. 'Has no one here any sense? Be quiet and sit down. The world will look after itself for a night, without your hand on the rim. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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And, surprisingly, it was Lymond's voice which said sharply, 'You cannot debar a human being from love! -- Dorothy Dunnett
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You've got one hero too many already. Stand on your own feet, Brother. It's good for the soul. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Man is a being of varied, manifold and inconstant nature. And woman, by God, is a match for him. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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And that was when she realized that laughter, which they had lost, had come back to them, and they were whole again. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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You will have power and wealth, but what are these to a scholar? You will end your life an oasis in a desert of ignorance. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Julius rose to his feet. The towel dropped, showering cut brown hair over Monna Alessandra's elegant tiles. His hair, finely tailored, clung to a thick-boned face with slanting eyes and a blunt profile which would have looked well on a coin. Tobie, who had almost no hair, gazed at him sadly. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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our childhood is over now, Marshal. Mankind can survive very well without an intimate study of your susceptibilities but not, unfortunately, without your other functions and talents. Do you think I bring any child into the world to live for himself alone? -- Dorothy Dunnett
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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. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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One escapes; but one always has to come back. I found too I disliked not being in command of myself. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Lymond, released, flung his head back and, viewing his winnings, gave them solemn dispensation to descend for the space of the dance. He asked for and obtained some chalk, and set to marking his and Mat's property where the cross was most obvious and the whim most appreciated. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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But you do not know me,' Lymond said. 'Whereas I know you exceedingly well. You should be glad. I may well find it tedious; but you should have an extremely interesting journey. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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If I did not know how to live, I shall know how to die. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I have many fears,' Lymond said. 'But death is not one of them. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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It is not enough,' Robert Reid said, 'to offer justice. The laws of men, the laws of God himself are not enough unless you know the heart, the tongue, the brain, the gut of your people. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Strophe and counterstrophe reached their epode. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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His defences are good. But it is his friends that will bring him low, not his enemies, Lady Culter. Keep you out of his way. That's the best advice I can give you. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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It doesn't do my self-esteem much good though, does it?'

'Your self-esteem has had a lifetime of steady attention,' said Philippa abstractedly. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Oh, well. I don't mind helping you to feel guilty if you must. On the other hand, I should point out that of all our various encounters, today is the only time you have favoured me with two civil words in sequence. I found it quite worrying. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I could see you drop dead this minute from paralysis of the brain cells and burst into uninhibited applause. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I hope the string and clapper arrangement he calls a mind has been permanently put out of action. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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The more modest your expectations, the less often you will court disappointment. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Francis Crawford's face in this fleeting moment of privacy was filled with ungovernable feeling: of shock and of pain and of a desire beyond bearing: the desire of the hart which longs for the waterbrook, and does not know, until it sees the pool under the trees, for what it has thirsted. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Mr Blyth, you should remember one thing. A celibate island life fighting Turks is no particular guarantee of early maturity. Take a little crone-like advice, and don't rush your judgements. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Look up ... and see them.
The teaching stars,
beyond worship
and commonplace tongues. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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To save our friends' nerves, I suggest we meet on a plane of brutal courtesy. It need not interfere with our mutual distrust.
-Francis Crawford of Lymond -- Dorothy Dunnett
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She gave up combing her hair, which the salt air had reduced to a kind of scrim of brown hessian, and, lying down, proceeded to keep her fingernails short in the way Kate admired least. Then she overslept. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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It won't be long,' said Philippa cheerfully, her mother's ring in her voice. 'You know what Bess says. There's nothing in this world a drop of aqua-vitae in a sheep's bladder won't cure. Stop the Somervilles with a knife! It needs artillery.' And she blew her nose hard. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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And, echoing Jerott, 'So why in hell have you come?' Philippa's gaze, bright and owlish and obstinate, held his to the end.

'To look after the baby,' she answered. And disconcertingly, after a second's blank pause, Francis Crawford flung back his damp head and laughed. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Well, get the coffer out," said Tobie roundly. "You find his clean clothes and I'll cut his hair round his cap and wash his ears out. Then, when we get to the Palazzo Medici, you imitate his voice and I'll sit him on my knee and move his arms up and down. Where is the problem? -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Every ruin is packed like a biscuit box. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Do you think I envy him? At least I was reared without tenderness and without expectation of it. During all that time, you were breeding a hothouse love based on deception. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Lion-hearted; her tremors braced with virtue, Philippa trotted on. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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It was a tragic and annihilating war, in which intellect fought naked with intellect, and the blows fell not upon the mind but upon the soul. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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You have not yet discovered what happens to Russians at sea.'

'The same thing, I suppose, that happens to Englishmen,' Chancellor said. 'Scots, I take it, are immune.'

'To sarcasm, yes,' Lymond said. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Lymond's life was lived on this level: the level on which the future of whole communities could be steered or reshaped, improved or jeopardized by a handful of people. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I do not ask,' said Dee. 'You note I do not ask - but I would swear, by all I have learned, that you are Scorpio.'

'With the sting in the tail?' Lymond said. 'You are probably right. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Whatever fascination Lymond held for her mother, it had no power at five in the morning. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Tact,' Lymond said, 'is the name you should have upon your tombstone. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I," said Lymond, in the voice unmistakably his which honeyed his most lethal thoughts, "I am a narwhal looking for my virgin. I have sucked up the sea like Charybdis and failing other entertainment will spew it three times daily, for a fee. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Kate won't be troubled. I don't know any gentlemen, anyway.'

'Thank you,' said Lymond. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Chancellor said, 'She is concerned for your future.'

'She is concerned for her dog and her cat,' Lymond said. 'It is a Somerville failing. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Repressively, Lymond himself answered. "I dislike being discussed as if I were a disease. Nobody 'got' me," he said. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Gardington was made over to me once, by the Crown. It's one of their standard good-conduct prizes for espionage.'

Philippa said, rather blankly, 'I thought you were spying at that time for Scotland.'

'Well, I wasn't spying for England,' Lymond said. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Lymond said, 'Have I been talking?'

'We all have, in nightmares. But yours have not been about the sea. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Lymond said gently, Let us bathe in moral philosophy, as in a living river. Double-dealing is my business. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I wish,' said Lymond, 'it would try a major key sometimes.'

'Wind,' Chancellor said, 'is a melancholy creature. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I have fallen out of the habit of talking to brothers,' Lymond said. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Lymond surveyed the grinning audience with an air of gentle discovery. Is there no work to be done? Or perhaps it's a holiday? -- Dorothy Dunnett
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And isna Sybilla a wee love o' a bitch?'

'You say the nicest things about my mother,' said Lymond. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Raveand Rhamnusia, Goddes of Dispyte,' said Lymond acidly. 'I am trying to get you home, vide the shiten shepherd and the clene shepe, with your woolly chops spotless. The only drawback to date is that the bloody sheep is going to have to carry the shepherd, so far as I can see. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I have learned,' said Lymond, 'that kindness without love is no kindness. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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What is your principal characteristic, would you say?'

'Treacherousness,' said Danny, gloriously.

'That,' said Lymond pleasantly, 'is everyone's principal characteristic. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Lymond's behaviour, as always, went to the limits of polite usage and then hurtled off into space. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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It was hard to say therefore why he did not go below, and rally his brother, and encourage him to let the past fade, and look forward to what lay before him. Unless, in his heart of hearts he recognized as Lymond did that what lay around him were shut gates; and what lay before him was nothing. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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She rose. 'You mean,' Catherine d'Albon said, 'I have agreed to marry a libertine?'

'Everyone marries libertines,' Lymond said comfortably, rising and taking her elbow. 'But not everyone knows it beforehand. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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You did not expect human values from a machine. You did not grow angry with a machine, or be disappointed or feel betrayed by it. You treated it with detachment and curiosity, as you would any soul-deprived object, and if it kicked you in the teeth, you side-stepped and kicked it back, harder. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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What he wanted was very near. It was typical of the monstrous, egregious, laughable irony which dominated his life that with every dragging lift of his arms, he should be saying over and over, 'Not yet.' -- Dorothy Dunnett
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This is habitual. Mother flutters her wings, and every institution within sight tumbles flat. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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It had been a boy's trick, Jerott remembered. Standing bareback on your father's horses; somersaulting, chariot-riding. Francis, buried in books, had never publicly attempted it. What private practice, Jerott wondered fleetingly, had gone into that? -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Intolerance drunk is bad enough, but intolerance sober is quite insupportable. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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If he is tired, and they put a foot wrong, he will choose the one unmentionable response and make it. He did it last night. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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What Mr Blyth has been engaged in was not love, my dear Francis. It was romance, a thing to which Mr Blyth has been very prone; together with melodrama. Whatever made you think that melodrama makes Mr Blyth uncomfortable? He revels in it. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Disdainful of fur and fretful, privately, about the cost of his buttons, Jerott Blyth sat like the born horseman he was, and watched discreetly for trouble. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Music, the knife without a hilt, -- Dorothy Dunnett
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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. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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What an extraordinary fuss there has been,' said the Dame de Doubtance raspingly, 'about that irresponsible Irishwoman and her improper child. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I devised a somewhat arbitrary way out of my own difficulties that evening. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Julius brooded. He could see Julius despising the medical school of Pavia. Tobie said, Nicholas managed the journey from Flanders all right. Deferred to you, joked discreetly with me, got on like a dyeworks on fire with the muleteers. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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For this, you are right, I need to be either entirely sober or very drunk indeed. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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He is not going to come back now, for me, for you or for anyone. This time he has found the boatman, and the boatman has taken him over. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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What I desire, thou dost not possess for thyself. How canst thou render it then to another? -- Dorothy Dunnett
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A long time afterwards, she was to remember what an excellent chess-player Francis Crawford was. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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You all know that each title in the Chronicles has a chess theme; that's partly because of the overall design of the Chronicles themselves - the game of chess as an analogue of the game of life. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Henry of England had all the virtues and all the faults, and solved the contradiction by making scapegoats and sin-eaters of half his entourage. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Whether romance existed in him or not, sentimentality had no place at all. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Mariotta listened to it all, sitting judicially in a whirl of velvet with all
the Culter jewels and the emerald necklace for moral support. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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He can make you want to knock him down, if he feels like it, by simply saying "good morning". He possibly said simply "good morning" to Lord Culter. The difference was that, being his brother, Culter hit him. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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We?' said Chancellor.

'I am lavishly paid,' Danny said, 'to think in the first person plural. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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The knowledgeable gypsy eyes scanned the dairy-maid skin, the gilded hair, the long hands, jewelled to display their beauty while the Master, serenely smiling, returned the compliment under relaxed lids. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Without thinking at all deeply about anything, he was chiefly aware of the need to be back in a company of men, fighting something. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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One battle in twelve might be won by a brilliant military stratagem. The rest stood or fell by somebody's blunders. Only rarely, there came the feel of a great campaign evolved by a stylist: imaginative, comprehensive, irresistible. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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They spoke in Latin, so that all might understand; but the quotations they flung at each other were Greek and Hebrew, Turkish, Persian. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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He has to perfection, M. le Comte, the art of living his private life with as much public attention as possible. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Man is not intellect only,' Guthrie said. 'Not until you reject all the claims of your body. Not until you have stamped out, little by little, all that is left of your soul. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Leaving him was less like leaving even the most simple of her friends in Flaw Valleys, and more like losing unfinished a manuscript, beautiful, absorbing and difficult, which she had long wanted to read. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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For reliable information, apply to a lawyer, a barber or prostitute. My informant hasn't found out so far who paid the captain.' 'But she will,' said Margaret, her face grave. 'I hope so,' he said with equal gravity, -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I'm going back to Russia. That's where the money is, and the power. And, of course, the ladies. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Like King Lewis of Hungary, who was immaturely born, came of age too soon and was immaturely married, my age is out of joint with my phenomenal destiny. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I dislike untidy wars, as I dislike untidy peacemaking. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Let's consider the subject exhausted except for choosing the wedding gift. Something tasteful with poison in it, perhaps. Although I can't think which of them deserves it the more. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Self-knowledge is not sold on the Rialto. And if it were, few people would buy. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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And then the blue eyes, with gentleness, scanned all her new-made body and came to rest on her eyes. 'I have begun to eat,' said Francis Crawford. 'And I have begun to slake my thirst. But in you I have found a banquet under the heavens that will serve me for ever. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Facts are the soil from which the story grows. Imagination is a last resort. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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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 -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I don't like to see things done badly on either. At the moment, I am tired of journeys. It is time I arrived somewhere. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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The moment is past. The chessboard has gone; and the people. You must let me take the room from you too. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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As everyone keeps insisting, parentage doesn't matter. Love him for what he is. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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The war between England and Scotland was in its eighth year and there had been no raid for ten days: it had seemed possible to get married in peace. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Men would fight well for their pay, but they would die for an aspiration. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I wish to make my fortune with you.' 'Well, you can forget about that, for a start,' said Francis Crawford. 'And if your place in Paradise has been written, then for God's sake hang on to it. Because we're going in the opposite direction. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I feel I deserve a little amusement at someone else's expense. That is all. I have worked for it. I have paid for it. And I propose to have it. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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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, or they could not bear the pain, mirrored over and over. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Kate said, her eyes very large, 'I find your rudeness abominable and your politeness obnoxious but my goodness, Francis Crawford, what terrifies me more than a jungle of tigers is the moment when you look worried. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I do admire efficiency,' said Marthe. 'But how tedious it can be in excess. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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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. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Intelligence is the only indispensable commodity in life or in warfare. If you think otherwise, go live in a hut with a poet. The rest of us will do our best to defend you. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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The crossroads may not be of your own seeking, but at least the road you choose will be your own. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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You choose to play God, and the Deity points out that the post is already adequately filled. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Humility is a virtue Scotsmen require to be taught. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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The trouble with you, M. le comte de Sevigny, is that you're too god-damned autocratic. From now on, you will kindly remember that a good military tactician requires the support of a team. We are your team. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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man had blandly abstained. He had been right: it would have lost him money. But not in Scotland, -- Dorothy Dunnett
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He had ridden through the night, without rest and without sleep, for this. It ought, surely, to give someone a moment of wry amusement. He understood - but then he had always understood - how Richard had felt at Philorth. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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His chest heaved, and he coughed.
"You have coughed before," his mother said. "It is a sign of weakness. Control it. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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We have reached the open sea, with some charts; and the firmament. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Elephants gave you less bother, any day. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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We may lack some polish,' he said. 'But distrust the society which displays overmuch dangerous charm. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Adam!' said Danny. 'You mustn't drop out of the choir. We have too much to do. What do we have to do? -- Dorothy Dunnett
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That day, engrossed together in the fate of the child, he met her mind to mind and fell in love with her, with every grain of his spirit and cell of his body; with the essential finality of death. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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What is there but untruth and heartbreak wherever you go? -- Dorothy Dunnett
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It was your brother. He must be insane."

"Not insane, dear." Sybilla, speaking gently, contradicted. "Not insane. But magnificently drunk, I fear. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Habits are the ruin of ambition, of initiative, of imagination. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Verily, God hath eighteen thousand worlds; and verily, your world is one of them, and this its bright axle-tree. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Words is but wind but dunts is the devil -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Don't be so sensitive,' he said, faintly chiding. 'It makes everyday commerce most trying. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Where are the links of the chain ... joining us to the past? -- Dorothy Dunnett
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A versatile commodity, death; except for those suffering it. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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In order to rule, one must face reality. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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And at thirty-eight a brilliant exponent of arms and a knight of the great fighting and religious Order of St John, the Chevalier de Villegagnon had absolutely no use for common sense himself, but respected it in the laity. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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If you will excuse us?'

'Go to Sir Henry's room,' Lady Mary called after her. 'And if you use weapons, be sure to call witnesses. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Well. On which aspect of our ill-advised doings are we about to lecture each other? I have very little to say. As I recall, I exhausted the matter on several other occasions. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Kate approved of the child's father, and so did she. Kate all her life had championed the underdog, and so therefore did she. And what more oppressed puppy in all the world was she likely to find than this one? -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Unlike Francis Crawford, whose game with life was a strange and rootless affair played with the intellect, Jerott had a passionate instinct to live. It was a happy circumstance also that his nervous and bronchial systems were roughly as frail as a bison's. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Quarrelling with the Prince of Barrow was like fighting a curtain. Robin Stewart gave up. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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He knew what would happen. He has laid wagers with himself, I imagine, for days: how many hours, how many miles towards safety before he has to drop out. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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It was only the first stage, that was all. It was only the first knot in the snare, the first flick of the hook; the first hint of the spin in the arrow. The first letting of blood not his own. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I have lost you before I have found you. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Here you have a hawk of the lure, not of the fist. He will not come to you. If you would have him, you must lay your heart upon your hawking-glove; and feed it to him. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Rimed and sparkling with sugar, the wrestler lay like some child's flaccid sweetmeat in death, and the dogs licked his eyelids. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Violence in nature is one thing, but among civilized mankind, what excuse is there? -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Discomfort without hope of betterment is not a great springboard. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Intentions, yours or anyone else's, don't matter; they never matter and never excuse. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Don't you think you should retire again? The first retiral seems to have got mislaid. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I would give you my soul in a blackberry pie; and a knife to cut it with. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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It would have made a fitting tomb, she supposed, for Thady Boy Ballagh. That it was fitting for Francis Crawford she would not believe. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Hen two friends discuss money, the third friend should invariably be asleep. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Though whether the mass murder of strangers for one's principles ranks higher in virtue than attacking one's neighbours for the hell of it is a point I'm glad I don't have to settle. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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The darts which make me suffer are my own. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Warfare and trickery. It is your natural element. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Why are you here?"

Silence. Then the boy said slowly, "Because I admire you. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Fools make news, and wise men carry it. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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Go away and bleed to death,' said his onetime saviour sharply. 'On behalf of the female sex I feel I may cheer every lesion. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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I had no expectations,' Philippa said. The tears stood still on her face. 'This is one lesson I know by heart already. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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A man of over thirty might be held to be at the height of his powers, but not necessarily of his wisdom. -- Dorothy Dunnett
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It is not advisable to crow. It might be oneself next time. -- Dorothy Dunnett