The Game of Kings (The Lymond Chronicles, #1)

by Dorothy Dunnett

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.”

Thick skin and prejudice won’t keep the dragons away.”

Habits are the ruin of ambition, of initiative, of imagination. They’re the curse of marriage and the after-bane of death.”

“I dislike being discussed as if I were a disease. Nobody ‘got’ me,” he said.