Darla > Darla's Quotes

“Anne laughed.

"I don't want sunbursts or marble halls, I just want you.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“[Robin Stewart] was your man. True for you, you had withdrawn the crutch from his sight, but still it should have been there in your hand, ready for him. For you are a leader-don't you know it? I don't, surely, need to tell you?-And that is what leadership means. It means fortifying the fainthearted and giving them the two sides of your tongue while you are at it. It means suffering weak love and schooling it till it matures. It means giving up you privicies, your follies and your leasure. It means you can love nothing and no one too much, or you are no longer a leader, you are led.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Queens' Play

“I have lived a thousand lives and I’ve loved a thousand loves. I’ve walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time. Because I read.”
― George R.R. Martin

“I don’t change from minute to minute. I don’t change at all.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Ringed Castle

“And deep within him, missing its accustomed tread, his heart paused, and gave one single stroke, as if on an anvil.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Ringed Castle

“There are shortcuts to happiness and dancing is one of them!”
― Vicki Baum, Ballerina

“Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.”
― Angela Carter

“Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.”
― Albert Schweitzer

“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, The Disorderly Knights

“Repressively, Lymond himself answered. “I dislike being discussed as if I were a disease. Nobody ‘got’ me,” he said.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Game of Kings

“So small a spirit, to lodge such sorrows as mankind has brought you. Live … live.… Wait for me, new, frightened soul. And though the world should reel to a puny death, and the wolves are appointed our godfathers, I will not fail you, ever.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Disorderly Knights

“Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

“You're only a man! You've not our gifts! I can tell you! Why, a woman can think of a hundred different things at once, all them contradictory!”
― Georgette Heyer, Powder and Patch

“Perhaps you have friends already who laugh when you do,’ she said diffidently. ‘I haven’t, and it’s important, I think – more important than sympathy in affliction, which you might easily find in someone you positively disliked.’ ‘But to share a sense of the ridiculous prohibits dislike – yes, that’s true. And rare!”
― Georgette Heyer, Venetia

“For an hour, blended with all she could offer, something noble had been created which had nothing to do with the physical world. And from the turn of his throat, the warmth of his hair, the strong, slender sinews of his hands, something further; which had. Though she combed the earth and searched through the smoke of the galaxies there was no being she wanted but this, who was not and should not be for Philippa Somerville.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“We have reached the open sea, with some charts; and the firmament.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“The guiding hand at one’s pony; the voice at one’s porridge bowl; the splendid athlete one watched from one’s books in the cold tower window, while outside in the sunshine he rode at the ring, threw his spears, matched his sword with the master-at-arms. The brother who had cared for him, a grown man in illness, and defended him against calumny, and who at length, heartbroken at his defection, had turned his back on him a year ago in Scotland.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“Tant que je vive, mon cueur ne changera
Pour nulle vivante, tant soit elle bonne ou sage
Forte et puissante, riche de hault lignaige
Mon chois est fait, aultrene se fera
***
Long as I live, my heart will never vary
For no one else, however fair or good
Brave, resolute, or rich, of gentle blood
My choice is made, and I will have no other.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“Léonie, you will do well to consider. You are not the first woman in my life."

She smiled through her tears. "Monseigneur, I would so much rather be the last woman than the first,” she said.”
― Georgette Heyer, These Old Shades

“Child, you do not know me. You have created a mythical being in my likeness whom you have set up as a god. It is not I. Many times, infant, I have told you that I am no hero, but I think you have not believed me. I tell you now that I am no fit mate for you...My reputation is damaged beyond repair, child. I come from vicious stock, and I have brought no honor to the name I bear. To no women have I been faithful; behind me lies scandal upon sordid scandal...You have seen perhaps the best of me; you have not seen the worst'

'Ah, Monseigneur, you need not have told me this! I know--I have always known, and still I love you. I do not want a boy. I only want Monseigneur.”
― Georgette Heyer, These Old Shades

“Go away and bleed to death,’ said his onetime saviour sharply. ‘On behalf of the female sex I feel I may cheer every lesion.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Queens' Play

“To succeed as you want, you have to be precise; you have to have polish; you have to carry polish and precision into everything you do. You have no time to sigh over seigneuries and begrudge other people their gifts. Lack of genius never held anyone back,’ said Lymond. ‘Only time wasted on resentment and daydreaming can do that.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Queens' Play

“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, The Ringed Castle

“Guthrie said, ‘You are destroying yourself. You are destroying all that makes common cause with your fellows.’

‘Some of it,’ said Lymond calmly. ‘It is my parting gift to you all. You are free, and so am I. There are no bonds between us, except those of the intellect.’

‘And the intellect,’ said Alec Guthrie, ‘will bring you back to us?’

‘Self-interest,’ Lymond said, ‘will bring me back to you. And intellect, I trust, will maintain me.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Ringed Castle

“I have lost you before I have found you.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Ringed Castle

“Alec Guthrie’s voice, serene from the shadows, said, ‘You are not going to Russia. You are not going. All your life you have resented control and brooked no hint of instruction or guidance. This time, your will is not paramount.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Ringed Castle

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”
― John Donne, No man is an island – A selection from the prose

“The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must be begun here on earth.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island