Top 100 Dorothy Dunnett Quotes

#1. In Rome there is a pathological shortage of small coins. For change, the little shops tend to use candy.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #4977
#2. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #12108
#3. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #18588
#4. Verily, God hath eighteen thousand worlds; and verily, your world is one of them, and this its bright axle-tree.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #47997
#5. Every ruin is packed like a biscuit box.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #53005
#6. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #57207
#7. I have learned,' said Lymond, 'that kindness without love is no kindness.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #71807
#8. Habits are the ruin of ambition, of initiative, of imagination.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #86797
#9. The moment is past. The chessboard has gone; and the people. You must let me take the room from you too.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #104679
#10. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #157398
#11. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #163510
#12. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #165360
#13. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #178145
#14. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #206155
#15. You've got one hero too many already. Stand on your own feet, Brother. It's good for the soul.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #216589
#16. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #274472
#17. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #299080
#18. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #308601
#19. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #334431
#20. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #348177
#21. A long time afterwards, she was to remember what an excellent chess-player Francis Crawford was.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #365653
#22. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #417272
#23. One escapes; but one always has to come back. I found too I disliked not being in command of myself.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #448851
#24. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #462064
#25. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #466106
#26. I have many fears,' Lymond said. 'But death is not one of them.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #511198
#27. Humility is a virtue Scotsmen require to be taught.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #590439
#28. Self-knowledge is not sold on the Rialto. And if it were, few people would buy.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #599456
#29. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #672316
#30. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #681529
#31. Lymond's behaviour, as always, went to the limits of polite usage and then hurtled off into space.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #732417
#32. We may lack some polish,' he said. 'But distrust the society which displays overmuch dangerous charm.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #736103
#33. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #748379
#34. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #764209
#35. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #784408
#36. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #789906
#37. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #804978
#38. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #836252
#39. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #839674
#40. Men would fight well for their pay, but they would die for an aspiration.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #844045
#41. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #881673
#42. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #893874
#43. Facts are the soil from which the story grows. Imagination is a last resort.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #902399
#44. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #936715
#45. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #943174
#46. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #946096
#47. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #949377
#48. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #962314
#49. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #964929
#50. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #973284
#51. Whether romance existed in him or not, sentimentality had no place at all.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #974429
#52. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #996579
#53. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1004379
#54. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1026709
#55. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1058926
#56. The darts which make me suffer are my own.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1059044
#57. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1112459
#58. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1140636
#59. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1140954
#60. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1141448
#61. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1141511
#62. We?' said Chancellor.

'I am lavishly paid,' Danny said, 'to think in the first person plural.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1153831
#63. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1154787
#64. Subject to intelligence, nothing is incalculable.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1154788
#65. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1170750
#66. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1175724
#67. He has to perfection, M. le Comte, the art of living his private life with as much public attention as possible.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1227641
#68. Whatever fascination Lymond held for her mother, it had no power at five in the morning.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1240059
#69. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1261348
#70. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1270774
#71. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1336745
#72. I have lost you before I have found you.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1401100
#73. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1402564
#74. I'm going back to Russia. That's where the money is, and the power. And, of course, the ladies.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1463475
#75. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1466116
#76. I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1493596
#77. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1511623
#78. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1512915
#79. Repressively, Lymond himself answered. "I dislike being discussed as if I were a disease. Nobody 'got' me," he said.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1543829
#80. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1582120
#81. Lack of genius never held anyone back. Only time wasted on resentment and daydreaming can do that.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1599307
#82. Warfare and trickery. It is your natural element.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1603048
#83. It is not advisable to crow. It might be oneself next time.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1621113
#84. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1623573
#85. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1631691
#86. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1643615
#87. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1651084
#88. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1654204
#89. A smile, bracketing his still mouth, spread like bane over Lymond's pale face.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1655405
#90. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1655991
#91. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1660002
#92. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1694355
#93. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1695872
#94. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1701648
#95. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1717730
#96. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1770474
#97. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1809992
#98. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1829084
#99. The more modest your expectations, the less often you will court disappointment.

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1829764
#100. 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

Dorothy Dunnett Quotes #1846544

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