Rafael Sabatini > Quotes

“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“...it is human nature, I suppose, to be futile and ridiculous.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“But I like my madness. There is a thrill in it unknown to such sanity as yours. ~ Book 1, Chapter 9,”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“It came to Mr. Blood, as he trudged forward under the laden apple-trees on that fragrant, delicious July morning, that man—as he had long suspected—was the vilest work of God, and that only a fool would set himself up as a healer of a species that was best exterminated.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood

“Only he who is without anything is without enemies.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood Returns

“Regret of neglected opportunity is the worst hell that a living soul can
inhabit”
― Rafael Sabatini

“Do you know, André, I sometimes think that you have no heart.'
'Presumably because I sometimes betray intelligence.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“Open the history of the past at whatsoever page you will and there you shall find coincidence at work bringing about events that the merest chance might have averted. Indeed, coincidence may be defined as the tool used by Fate to shape the destinies of men and nations.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood

“There remained the sea, which is free to all, and particularly alluring to those who feel themselves at war with humanity.”
― Rafael Sabatini

“Thirstily he set it to his lips, and as its cool refreshment began to soothe his throat, he thanked Heaven that in a world of much evil there was still so good a thing as ale.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Fortune's Fool

“The idea of equality is a by-product of the sentiment of envy. Since it must always prove beyond human ower to raise the inferior mass to a superior stratum, apostles of equality must ever be inferiors seeking to reduce their betters to their level. It follows that a nation that once admits this doctrine of equality will be dragged by it to the level, moral, intelletual and political, of its most worthless class.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“Truth is so often disconcerting.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“He was suffering from the loss of an illusion.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“To do what you imply would require nothing short of divine intervention. You must change man, not systems.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“But they were fated to misunderstand each other.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood

“A man must sometimes laugh at himself or go mad,’ said he. ‘Few realize it. That is why there are so many madmen in the world.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood

“Do you expect sincerity in man when hypocrisy is the very keynote of human nature? We are nurtured on it; we are schooled in it, we live by it; and we rarely realize it.’
– Book 3, Chapter 16”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“When all is said, a man's final judgment of his fellows must be based upon his knowledge of himself”
― Rafael Sabatini, The Sea-Hawk

“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“But he looks no more than thirty. He's very handsome-- so much you will admit; nor will you deny that he is very wealthy and very powerful; the greatest nobleman in Brittany. He will make me a great lady.'
'God made you that, Aline.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“We are all, he says, the sport of destiny. Ah, but not quite. Destiny is an intelligent force, moving with purpose.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“To do what you imply would require nothing short of divine intervention. you must change man, not systems. Can you and our vapouring friends of the Literary Chamber of Rennes, or any other learned society of France, devise a system of government that has never yet been tried? Surely not. And can we say of any system tried that it proved other than failure in the end? My dear Philippe, the future is to be read with certainty only in the past. Ad actu ad posse valet consecutio. Man never changes. He is always greedy, always acquisitive, always vile. I am speaking of Man in the bulk.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“With you it is always the law, never equity.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“Most of this world's misery is the fruit not as priests tell us of wickedness, but of stupidity....
And we know that of all stupidities he considered anger the most deplorable.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“Life can be infernally complex,’ he said.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood

“In endeavor itself there is a certain dynamic entertainment, affording an illusion of useful purpose. With achievement the illusion is dispelled. Man's greatest accomplishment is to produce change. The only good in life is study, because study is an endeavor that never reaches fulfillment. It busies a man to the end of his days, and it aims at the only true reality in all this world of shams and deceits.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Bellarion the Fortunate

“I am very poor - for a know nothing, understand nothing. It is not a calamitous condition until it is realized.”
― Rafael Sabatini

“I regret,' said he, 'that I have no cup; but, as you see, I can practise phlebotomy with a bottle.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood Returns

“It is not human to be wise,’ said Blood. ‘It is much more human to err, though perhaps exceptional to err on the side of mercy.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood

“Peter Blood judged her- as we are all prone to do- upon insufficient knowledge.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood