The Spring of the Ram Quotes

“Tobie. Unless I'm giving off steam, behave normally. I remember what to do. One foot in front of the other, but not both at the same time unless I'm a robin.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Spring of the Ram

“Your state has been seen, and will be reported on. Only it is necessary that you do not yawn. Or, of course, speak. Discretion in all things in all things is needed." She was reminding them, and she hoped they realised it, that they were not circumcised. The circumlocution expected of a high-born Syrian princess was sometimes a trial to Sara Khatun.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Spring of the Ram

“Well, get the coffer out," said Tobie roundly. "You find his clean clothes and I'll cut his hair round his cap and wash his ears out. Then, when we get to the Palazzo Medici, you imitate his voice and I'll sit him on my knee and move his arms up and down. Where is the problem?”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Spring of the Ram

“You don't take offence?"
"Frequently," Nicholas said. "I seldom show it.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Spring of the Ram

“Julius rose to his feet. The towel dropped, showering cut brown hair over Monna Alessandra's elegant tiles. His hair, finely tailored, clung to a thick-boned face with slanting eyes and a blunt profile which would have looked well on a coin. Tobie, who had almost no hair, gazed at him sadly.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Spring of the Ram

“Julius brooded. He could see Julius despising the medical school of Pavia. Tobie said, "Nicholas managed the journey from Flanders all right. Deferred to you, joked discreetly with me, got on like a dyeworks on fire with the muleteers.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Spring of the Ram

“He had never used his own sword since it came to him. He had never fought Simon equally before, except with poles, which had nearly been the end of him; and in a crazy chase through water where he had finished being bayed down by hounds. He could handle a polestaff well now, and had had himself taught to swim perfectly. He wondered, drawing the new, shining blade, what other skills Simon would force him to master. Finding a method of resurrection, perhaps.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Spring of the Ram

“Nicholas had never before felt amused by anything to do with Simon. He divided twelve quickly by three and concluded that he had not been punched seriously on the head.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Spring of the Ram

“Nicholas formed the opinion that my lord Simon was untouched by time and probably by experience.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Spring of the Ram

“Friendship with his fellow religious had caused him to neaten his clothes and reduce his tattered black hair to something more seemly, although he still moved more like a man of his fists than a man of the Church, and his greatest battle, still, was the one to disguise his natural temper.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Spring of the Ram

“You're indecent.'
Tobie dragged down his shirt. 'It reflects my state of mind,' he said.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Spring of the Ram

“When a Venetian associates with a Genoese, it is not for the sake of amusement, I assure you.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Spring of the Ram