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Human beings have the capacity to rise above mundane circumstances and touch the eternal.
That was not the end of the problems, but it was the beginning of solutions.
what a thrill it would be to create something from nothing;
Monks committed all the same sins that ordinary people did.
The world of power and property required that a man be suspicious, demanding, and insistent.
These people in their fine robes, knights and lords and merchants and bishops, were just men.
The first casualty of a civil war was justice, Philip had realized.
There were not many people who said what they meant and did what they said.
“You got me out of a prison,” he said, and he laughed. “What a mother!”
“I want you to know how terrible this has been for me. You seemed to love me, then you seemed to hate me, and now you’re going to marry my stepbrother. I don’t understand. I don’t know anything about these things, I’ve never been in love before. It’s all so hurtful. I can’t find words for how bad it is. Don’t you think you should at least try to explain to me why I have to go through this?”
“Pray for miracles, but plant cabbages.”
“There may come a time when savages like William Hamleigh aren’t in power; when the laws protect the ordinary people instead of enslaving them; when the king makes peace instead of war. Think of that—a time when towns in England don’t need walls!”
I should have known better, she thought; I should have known he would love me just as much.
He had ruined her father, raped her, taken her castle, burned her wool and exiled her brother, but every time he thought he had crushed her she came back again, rising from defeat to new heights of power and wealth.
The power of a king was not absolute, after all: it could be restrained by the will of the people.
