Checkmate Quotes

“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

“My son took many years to learn the simple truth. You cannot love any one person adequately until you have made friends with the rest of the human race also. Adult love demands qualities which cannot be learned living in a vacuum of resentment.”
― 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

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

“Where are the links of the chain ... joining us to the past?”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“It doesn’t do my self-esteem much good though, does it?’

‘Your self-esteem has had a lifetime of steady attention,’ said Philippa abstractedly.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“Philippa allowed polite regret to inform every muscle. ‘Whatever day it occurs,’ she said, ‘I feel I have a previous engagement.’

‘May I congratulate you,’ he said agreeably, ‘on your evident popularity.’

‘Anything I can do,’ Philippa said, ‘to save you from the exhaustions of pluralism.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“You haven’t enough artillery, have you?’

‘Against you or the Germans?’ said Lymond.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“You might, without my crediting it, fall deeply in love and forever, with some warped hunchback whelped in the gutter. I should equally stop you from taking him.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“Before God, you are my soul; and till death and beyond, will remain so.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“For a moment, disconnected by the stitch in his side, he listened not to the sense but to the interplay of the two flexible voices, one masculine and light, one mellow and feminine, unreeling their story, faintly affronted amid mounting hysteria. He opened his eyes.

He knew, because his memories of Francis Crawford went back further than those of anyone there, that Lymond was rather drunk, although he could still disguise it. The quick-wittedness, the invention, the faultless comedy timing were present at the price of a little concentration which had closed his outer consciousness for the moment. Jerott, no longer laughing, sat in the shadows and watched the dazzling performance and both the players, blond and brown, artist and acolyte.

Acolyte. But Philippa was a child no longer: he had known that since that single evening in Lyon. The severe, clear-skinned profile turned towards Francis might have belonged to any great lady. The brown and brilliant gaze only quizzed him at intervals: she seemed able, Jerott saw, to sense by instinct the course of his fantasy; and as with Lymond, what she was doing at present occupied all her awareness. Then Francis surged to his feet, leaving his robe, and launched into Jason’s querulous tour de force, fractured by interruptions and a mounting fury of incoherent resentment, and finally disintegrating in chaos.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“We are here. We will work together for what purpose seems to us right. We will work with calm, and with tolerance and, please God, with saving laughter.

‘We know something of men. We know of evil, and of sloth, and of self-seeking ambition. We accept it, and will use what we have of wit and good faith to overcome it.

‘And if we do not overcome it, still we are the road; we are the bridge; we are the conduit. For something have we been born. For something have we been brought here. And if we hold firm, the men who peopled our earth need not be ashamed, when the reckoning comes, to say, we worked with all we had been given; and for one another.’”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“And that was when she realized that laughter, which they had lost, had come back to them, and they were whole again.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“Intolerance drunk is bad enough, but intolerance sober is quite insupportable.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“One knows, when all one’s life one has walked in dangerous places, when the silence is that of ambush and when the silence is that of emptiness.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“Since I doubt, at the moment, whether I can stomach any hysterical verbiage, suppose we simply say what we mean.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“Every other woman since Eve has asked to be loved more than honour. But not you.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“There is no one to understand us, except ourselves.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“The more modest your expectations, the less often you will court disappointment.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“There are times,’ said Philippa shortly, ‘when I feel like the entire Russian army.’

‘There are times,” said Lymond equally shortly, ‘when I wish that you were. It would solve the whole Tartar problem and save Ottoman Turkey for Jesus.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“Nine-tenths of every attack is bluff. The art is to know when to call it.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“My name is Francis Crawford, and my brother and I studied at St Barbe.’

‘I know that,’ said Moses. He took the ring, and stood, the broad grin stamped on his features. ‘It is true what you did to all the Professors’ boots?’

Lymond stared at him. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yes. I’m afraid it is.’

‘Is it true about the mathematical proposition you placed before Orontius Finnaeus that spelt …’

‘I don’t know how you heard about it,’ said M. de Sevigny. ‘Perhaps you had better not tell me what else you know about my misspent youth.’

Moses said, ‘When the ladies of the rue Glatigny were invited …?’

‘That,’ said M. de Sevigny, ‘is what I meant.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“He was not a figment of daydream or of fantasy. He was the quick-witted man who had raced with her; the man whose strong wrists had pulled her from trouble; whose laughter recognized, more than his own, her buffoonery; whose voice had whispered, sung, exclaimed or cursed, with equal felicity, carefree as birdsong on top of their striving.

Whose essence, stripped by necessity was, it now seemed, warm and joyous and of great generosity.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“If you’re the first of November, you’re Scorpio. A large reporter of his owne Acts. Prudent of behaviour in owne affairs. A lover of Quarrels and theevery, a promoter of frayes and commotions. As wavery as the wind; neither fearing God or caring for Man.’

‘Better,’ said Lymond coldly, ‘to be stung by a nettle than pricked by a rose.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“To a chorus of resonant barking, the instruments proceeded to adjust themselves into tune. A billy-goat, alarmed, aroused his harem, and distantly a muffled lowing broke out.

Philippa said, ‘Oh dear. It must have cost a fortune. Did Gideon ever do this to you?’

Kate thought. ‘No, but I did it to him. He hadn’t called to see me for a week, so I sent eight bell ringers to serenade him at cock-crow and his mother’s parrot dropped dead, quoting Luther.’

‘What did it say?’ Philippa said. Sitting on the sill, with her long brown hair falling over her night robe, she looked, in the darkness, like the daughter who had come back from Turkey: calm and smiling and soignée.

‘Music is a fair and lovely gift of God, and deserves to be extolled as the mistress and governess of the feelings of the human heart,’ said Kate, surprised.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“I have a suggestion in that case,’ said Lymond. ‘You two have the orgy, and I’ll keep the drinker’s headache.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“I know enough,’ said Adam Blacklock, ‘not to ask a lot of interfering bloody questions and expect them to be answered. If someone builds a bulwark that high, it’s for reasons that matter, I take it.’

‘I also,’ said Alec Guthrie. ‘But a bulwark may cut off help, as well as interference. Jerott is right. To measure a ladder against it from time to time is justifiable.’

‘Then let’s leave it to Jerott,’ said Danny. ‘The next man with a ladder, I fancy, is going to find himself bounced off and run through the brisket.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“It was then that she found that he had laid flat, himself, every defence against her: that she could, if she wished, enter and be received within this, the long-guarded citadel. And so she discovered, fragment by fragment, what he had never told anyone: the inner truth of all those events which, strung together, made up his unruly life.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“I wrote you.’

‘I didn’t get it,’ said Archie.

‘I wrote Applegarth as well,’ said Adam angrily.

‘He didn’t get it either. He’s away for a day or two. Jesus,’ said Archie, ‘are ye not keen to come in? You must be fair wore out with all that writing.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“You invited them without Lymond knowing?’ said Danny Hislop. He wriggled into the circle. ‘Can I be there when he hears about it?”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate