"I stood still, vision blurring, and in that moment, I heard my heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower's stem."
— Diana Gabaldon (Dragonfly in Amber)

"I had one last try.
"Does it bother you that I'm not a virgin?"
He hesitated a moment before answering. "Well, no," he said slowly, "so long as it doesna bother you that I am."
He grinned at my drop-jawed expression, and backed toward the door. "Reckon one of us should know what they're doing," he said.
The door closed softly behind him; clearly the courtship was over. "
— Diana Gabaldon (Outlander)

""Harmless as a setting dove," he agreed. "I'm too hungry to be a threat to anything but breakfast. Let a stray bannock come within reach, though, and I'll no answer for the consequences." "
— Diana Gabaldon

"...well, if women's work was never done, why trouble about how much of it wasn't being accomplished at any given moment?"
— Diana Gabaldon (The Fiery Cross)

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years."
— Alexis de Tocqueville

"I found myself thinking that I had always heretofore assumed that the tendency of eighteenth-century ladies to swoon was due to tight stays; now I rather thought it might be due to the idiocy of eighteenth-century men."
— Diana Gabaldon (Dragonfly in Amber)