Ariana Franklin Quotes & Sayings

Will there be traitors, Father?" "There are always traitors. Trust nobody. — Ariana Franklin

Welcome to the gates of heaven Adelia, and what did you do with your life? My Lord, I was a bishop's whore. — Ariana Franklin

Man hovers between Paradise and the Pit," Gordinus told her cheerfully. "Sometimes rising to one, sometimes swooping to the other. To ignore his capacity for evil is as obtuse as blinding oneself to the heights to which he can soar. — Ariana Franklin

Man provides his own goods and his own evils, neither God nor the Devil has anything to do with it. — Ariana Franklin

The law should be the point at which savagery ended because civilization stood in its path. — Ariana Franklin

Truth travels slowly and gets weaker as it goes. Suitable lies are strong and run faster. — Ariana Franklin

To what do you not drive human hearts, cursed for craving gold! — Ariana Franklin

Tomorrows were full of awful things. Today, now, was the essential. — Ariana Franklin

A thousand years of dominion went ringing across the Thames like a trumpet blast. Anglo-Saxon and Viking-Norman ancestry combined in a chord that had deafened and conquered nations. It expected the moon to bow the knee. If not, so much the worse for the moon. — Ariana Franklin

Oh shit, you had to be bloody careful when you invoked God; He could amuse Himself by granting what you'd prayed for ... — Ariana Franklin

You are a drab, she told herself, seduced into infatuation by a soldier's tale. Outremer, bravery, crusade, it is illusory romance. Pull yourself together, woman. — Ariana Franklin

I yield to nobody in my admiration for God, but he's no good in bed. — Ariana Franklin

Turn over that stone" - she pointed to a flint nearby - "and you will find a charlatan who will dazzle you with the favorable conjunction of Mercury and Venus, flatter your future, and sell you colored water for a gold piece. I can't be bothered with it. From me you get the actuality. — Ariana Franklin

Obviously, not everybody who dies becomes a ghost, otherwise those who are psychic would be aware of shouldering through deep crowds of assorted shades every time they moved. — Ariana Franklin

She knew now why mercenaries unnerved her, not only because they were dangerous in themselves but because they were outside the only system on which her society, real society, was built, whereby everybody owed duty to somebody under feudal law, just as her tenants, free and unfree; her knights; and her manor holders had to pay her in various taxes and service, just as she, their tenant in chief, had to render taxes and service to the ultimate earthly authority, the king. Mercenaries were unattached from the only mechanism that gave order to the world; they floated free of all responsibility except to those who paid them, like disgusting flies sucking at a sweetness to which they had not contributed. That was why — Ariana Franklin

But God, having as little comprehension of the feminine mind as any male, did not reply. — Ariana Franklin

Alcoholism plus criminality plus whatever caused both in the first place form a combination that is very nearly happy-ending-proof. — Ariana Franklin

The possession of power brings on madness. — Ariana Franklin

Sister Walburga ate some of the sausage she was taking upriver for the anchorites, but you'd think from her distress that she was a Horseman of the Apocalypse and the Whore of Babylon rolled into one. — Ariana Franklin

The scar, and her indifference to it, did something extraordinary for her, just as damage to some art object threw into relief how beautiful it had once been, tarnishing and tempering her face with the reminder of what humanity did to lovely things and how they bore it. — Ariana Franklin

Love- however doomed, had the capacity to attach bouys to the soul. — Ariana Franklin

Ghosts cannot be put on the witness stand, or have their fingerprints taken. They are completely proof against proof. — Ariana Franklin

Insanity has excuses; wickedness has not. — Ariana Franklin

And then in response to a reply audible to no one but him, Gwilherm de Vannes, bravest of men, gave one last contented sigh and closed his eyes. — Ariana Franklin

This infatuation must be dispelled; it is necessary for me not to admire you. I do not wish to fall in love. — Ariana Franklin

She had a quality he had never known- she WAS quality. — Ariana Franklin

Crime, after all, can be a way of establishing identity or acquiring security - at least the magistrate addresses you by name. — Ariana Franklin

Loyalty could come only of exchange and mutual regard. — Ariana Franklin

She thought, watching him, 'I am in a bath, naked in a bath with no bubbles, and a man is washing me; my reputation is doomed and to hell with it. I've been to hell and all I wanted in it was to be alive for this man. Who carried me out of it. — Ariana Franklin

A daughter,' Rowley scooped up the child and held her high. The baby blinked from sleep and crowed with him. 'Any fool can have a son,' he said. 'It takes a man to conceive a daughter. — Ariana Franklin

She was ushered into a passage where the only light came from the tallow taper in the rabbi's hand. The house smelled of chicken soup. In the thousand miles she and Rosa and the children had traveled from Siberia, passed along like parcels from settlement to Jewish settlement, sometimes in houses, often in huts, that smell had been the one constant, as if they had followed its trail by sniffing, like dogs. However poor their hosts, a hen had been killed in their honor because hospitality demanded it. — Ariana Franklin