Bellarion Quotes

“In endeavor itself there is a certain dynamic entertainment, affording an illusion of useful purpose. With achievement the illusion is dispelled. Man's greatest accomplishment is to produce change. The only good in life is study, because study is an endeavor that never reaches fulfillment. It busies a man to the end of his days, and it aims at the only true reality in all this world of shams and deceits.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Bellarion the Fortunate

“It was, he supposed, a manifestation of that romantic and unreasonable phenomenon known as chivalry. If he extricated himself alive from this predicament, he would see to it that whatever follies he committed in the future, chivalry would certainly not be found amongst them. Experience had cured him of any leanings in that direction.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Bellarion The Fortunate

“He questioned now his heresy on the score of sin. It was possible that, after all, the theologians might be right. Whether sin and evil were convertible terms he could not be sure. But not only was he quite sure that there was no lack of evil in the world; he actually began to wonder if evil were not the positive force that fashions the destinies of men, whilst good is but a form of resistance which, however strong, remains passive, or else, when active, commonly operates through evil that it may ultimately prevail.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Bellarion

“Yet patience, sirs, can be exceeded until from a virtue it becomes a vice. I have more respect for an advocate of rash courses’—and he inclined his head slightly to Count Spigno—‘than for those who practise an excessive caution whilst time is slipping by.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Bellarion

“He understood, for instance, that to rise by the pleasure of the people is the only way of reaching stable eminence, and that to accomplish this, noble qualities must be exhibited. For whilst men singly may be swayed by vicious appeals, collectively they will respond only to appeals of virtue.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Bellarion

“This was an easier and less costly method of conquest than the equipping of great armies, and also it was more effective, because an invader who imposes himself by force can never hope to be so secure or esteemed as one whom the people have invited to become their ruler.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Bellarion

“Risk sweetens enterprise,’ he answered, ‘and wit can conquer it.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Bellarion

“He is a fool who helps to make a woman wise.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Bellarion

“Experience,’ he had been wont to say—being rather addicted, I gather, to the making of epigrammatic formulæ—‘is the hornbook of fools, unnecessary for the practical purposes of life to the man of wit.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Bellarion

“Aye, Aye!’ Bellarion displayed ill-humour, whilst his eyes abated nothing of their suspicious glance. ‘It is easy to make philosophy upon the woes of others.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Bellarion

“Render thanks to God, Whose grace is discernible even in misfortune. For no evil befalls us that will not serve to show how much greater that evil might have been. Take that for comfort ever in adversity, my child.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Bellarion

“Is it not possible that those who invented the devil may have studied divinity in Persia, where the creed obtains that powers of light and darkness, Ormuzd and Ahriman, strive perpetually for mastery of the world Surely, otherwise, they would have remembered that if the devil exists, God must have created him, which in itself is blasphemy, for God can create no evil.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Bellarion

“It is your innocence that speaks. Alas, my child, in the world, from which hitherto you have been mercifully sheltered, you will find that sin is not only real but terribly abundant.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Bellarion

“This abominable heresy, fruit of much brooding, was that in the world there is not, nor can be, such a thing as sin.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Bellarion

“After all, to view a scene from a distance is to enjoy advantages of perspective denied to the actors in that scene.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Bellarion