Dorothy Dunnett Quotes & Sayings

And then his true courtship of her had its beginning; and to the worship of his body, he joined the fairest garlands from the treasure-house of his mind, and made a bower for her.

Adored; caressed into delight; conducted by delicate paths into ravishing labyrinths where pleasure, like carillons on glass, played upon pleasure, she leaned on his voice, and sometimes answered it. — Dorothy Dunnett

Oh, well. I don't mind helping you to feel guilty if you must. On the other hand, I should point out that of all our various encounters, today is the only time you have favoured me with two civil words in sequence. I found it quite worrying. — Dorothy Dunnett

Taut, merry, nervous, expertly mounted, exquisitely clothed, haughty in their bright youth, the chevaliers of France poured from the disheveled clearing. Sunlit, all that morning, they spanned the glittering woods: diamond on diamond, grey on grey, riches on riches; bough and limb indistinguishable; skirts and meadows sewn in the same silks; skulls in antique fantasy knotted with rhizome and leafy with fern frond. Webs, manes, beards, spun the same smokelike filament; rime flashed; jewels sparked, red and fat, on rosebush and ring. Earth and animals wore the same livery. Jazerained in its berries, the oak tree matched their pearls, and paired their brilliant-sewn housings with low mosses underfoot, freshets winking half-ice in the pile. — Dorothy Dunnett

Jerott's hand increased its grip on her arm. 'He is an island with all its bridges wantonly severed. What hostage to evil,' said Jerott, poetic in his thumping displeasure, 'will this night's business conceive?'

'I don't know. But they're both nice and clean, if that's anything,' said Philippa. And led the way philosophically down. — Dorothy Dunnett

My dear man,' said Lymond, 'he was keeping the numbers down. If we hadn't taken precautions the whole of the noble Order of St John would be disporting itself at St Mary's under the delusion that it was earning merit by converting us to the Cross. As it is, another half dozen are due any day. Alec, now you've kept us right, I'd be grateful if you would see if the head of the column knows what the hell it's doing without you. Jerott, it won't help us in an ambush if the rearguard is agonizing silently over Joleta's jeopardized soul. Forget the brat. Remember, we're common, coarse fighting-men, not a heavenly host in our shifts. — Dorothy Dunnett

And Lymond's bright, sardonic face, looking into hers, lost all its amusement; all its icy amiability; all its social charm. 'My dear sister in Christ, and mother in expectation, I may be what Buccleuch has called me: a harlot. But a discriminating harlot, my dear.' And, flashing out an arm, he snatched, lightly from below her labouring grasp, a fine glass vase of Sybilla's at her side. 'You don't sign your work twice,' he said softly. 'It's unlucky. — Dorothy Dunnett

Look. If you are having pains, scream. If you are seeing thousand-pound elephant birds with reinforced iron nests, tell us and we shall believe you. If you want to climb up and jump from the roof, let me tell you that we feel exactly the same. Only don't lock your door like a maiden aunt with the gravel. — Dorothy Dunnett

We may lack some polish,' he said. 'But distrust the society which displays overmuch dangerous charm. — Dorothy Dunnett

Let's consider the subject exhausted except for choosing the wedding gift. Something tasteful with poison in it, perhaps. Although I can't think which of them deserves it the more. — Dorothy Dunnett

Mr Blyth, you should remember one thing. A celibate island life fighting Turks is no particular guarantee of early maturity. Take a little crone-like advice, and don't rush your judgements. — Dorothy Dunnett

The trouble with you, M. le comte de Sevigny, is that you're too god-damned autocratic. From now on, you will kindly remember that a good military tactician requires the support of a team. We are your team. — Dorothy Dunnett

The moment is past. The chessboard has gone; and the people. You must let me take the room from you too. — Dorothy Dunnett

Strophe and counterstrophe reached their epode. — Dorothy Dunnett

Like King Lewis of Hungary, who was immaturely born, came of age too soon and was immaturely married, my age is out of joint with my phenomenal destiny. — Dorothy Dunnett

The darts which make me suffer are my own. — Dorothy Dunnett

The trouble with Austin was that he believed so deeply in the chivalrous virtues that he found it impossible to refer to them. — Dorothy Dunnett

It would have made a fitting tomb, she supposed, for Thady Boy Ballagh. That it was fitting for Francis Crawford she would not believe. — Dorothy Dunnett

Versatility is one of the few human traits which are universally intolerable. You may be good at Greek and good at painting and be popular. You may be good at Greek and good at sport, and be wildly popular. But try all three and you're a mountebank. Nothing arouses suspicion quicker than genuine, all-round proficiency. — Dorothy Dunnett

The crossroads may not be of your own seeking, but at least the road you choose will be your own. — Dorothy Dunnett

Subject to intelligence, nothing is incalculable. — Dorothy Dunnett

Kate approved of the child's father, and so did she. Kate all her life had championed the underdog, and so therefore did she. And what more oppressed puppy in all the world was she likely to find than this one? — Dorothy Dunnett

Of all the homes I have known, yours has been a shining model of wisdom and kindness and honesty. For what you and your mother have done in the past, for me and for the child, I owe you a profound debt of honour. You have that claim on me. So has your mother. But if you press it too far; if you will accept no appeal and continue to press it, over and over; if you move into my life, both of you, and take your stance there and feel obliged to command and instruct me in how I should or should not behave, you will destroy our relationship. I shall walk away from you both; I shall deny you both; I shall repudiate all you have done for me. It will all be as if it had never happened ... I don't know what you fear for me, but that you should fear. For I cannot afford it. — Dorothy Dunnett

What I desire, thou dost not possess for thyself. How canst thou render it then to another? — Dorothy Dunnett

Music, the knife without a hilt, — Dorothy Dunnett

To the men exposed to his rule Lymond never appeared ill: he was never tired; he was never worried, or pained, or disappointed, or passionately angry. If he rested, he did so alone; if he slept, he took good care to sleep apart. " - I sometimes doubt if he's human," said Will, speaking his thought aloud. "It's probably all done with wheels. — Dorothy Dunnett

Philippa Somerville was annoyed. To her friends the Nixons, who owned Liddel Keep, and with whom Kate had deposited her for one night, she had given an accurate description of Sir William Scott of Kincurd, his height, his skill, his status, and his general suitability as an escort for Philippa Somerville from Liddesdale to Midculter Castle. And the said William Scott had not turned up. She fumed all the morning of that fine first day of May, and by afternoon was driven to revealing her general dissatisfaction with Scotland, the boring nature of Joleta, her extreme dislike of one of the Crawfords and the variable and unreliable nature of the said William Scott. She agreed that the Dowager Lady Culter was adorable, and Mariotta nice, and that she liked the baby. — Dorothy Dunnett

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

Warfare and trickery. It is your natural element. — Dorothy Dunnett

man had blandly abstained. He had been right: it would have lost him money. But not in Scotland, — Dorothy Dunnett

The more modest your expectations, the less often you will court disappointment. — Dorothy Dunnett

I don't bed with children.'

'Rumour says,' said Catherine d'Albon, 'that you did. Or are the Knights of St John all mistaken?'

'You know too much,' said Francis Crawford slowly. 'Shall I amend it? I don't bed with young girls who are virgins, unless they ask me, and unless I am married to them. — Dorothy Dunnett

He'd heard of this woman. The Dame de Doubtance, they called her: a madwoman and a caster of horoscopes. Gaultier gave her house-room and men and women came to her from all the known world and had their futures foretold - if she felt like it. She had given some help once to Lymond, on her own severe terms, because of a distant link, it was said, with his family. Plainly, a crazy old harridan. But if she was going to tell Lymond he ought to find a nice girl and marry her, Jerott wanted very much to be there. — Dorothy Dunnett

[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

Adam!' said Danny. 'You mustn't drop out of the choir. We have too much to do. What do we have to do? — Dorothy Dunnett

Don't you think you should retire again? The first retiral seems to have got mislaid. — Dorothy Dunnett

His chest heaved, and he coughed.
"You have coughed before," his mother said. "It is a sign of weakness. Control it. — Dorothy Dunnett

I think it would be truer to say,' Philippa said, 'that both of us at the time had our reasons for hurting you. — Dorothy Dunnett

The alternative is English force: reprisals and raids and counter-raids and broken promises, as you say. Of course you must try to secure this alliance. You might have achieved it in the last reign but for Henry. It was he who fostered the cult of the honest emotion, and you're still paying for the mistake. — Dorothy Dunnett

Disdainful of fur and fretful, privately, about the cost of his buttons, Jerott Blyth sat like the born horseman he was, and watched discreetly for trouble. — Dorothy Dunnett

She was as pale as the silk. Scott saw Lymond's gaze rest on her, delicately practised, just before he moved. Then he touched her, and the woman's eyes closed. Folded with infinite care on the sweet edge between agony and delight she suffered a kiss of an expert passion which made itself lord of all the senses, of thought, and the dead fields of time. The fire blazed on Lymond's shoulder and arm and his bent head, and Scott saw something regal in the still, white and gold figures melted into one, pliant as a painting in honey and wax. Then — Dorothy Dunnett

Here you have a hawk of the lure, not of the fist. He will not come to you. If you would have him, you must lay your heart upon your hawking-glove; and feed it to him. — Dorothy Dunnett

Kate won't be troubled. I don't know any gentlemen, anyway.'

'Thank you,' said Lymond. — Dorothy Dunnett

And then the blue eyes, with gentleness, scanned all her new-made body and came to rest on her eyes. 'I have begun to eat,' said Francis Crawford. 'And I have begun to slake my thirst. But in you I have found a banquet under the heavens that will serve me for ever. — Dorothy Dunnett

He said, 'You have everything there is of me, save a little I gave to my people. Now you hold that as well.'
And last of all, when he had released her and moved to the door, to stand outside where the sky was enclosed with thick hills and dark, heavy forests, he said, because he could not prevent himself, 'When next you stand by the sea, say goodbye for me. — Dorothy Dunnett

And the effect on yourself?' Guthrie said.

For a short time, Lymond was silent. Then he said, 'I had some strengths, which have grown. I had some weaknesses, which have gone.'

'That is true,' Adam Blacklock said. Slumped between floor and wall, he had leaned his tired head on the panelling; his face, with its thin scar, was turned without expression to Lymond. 'You have become a machine.'

'No,' said Philippa. 'That is not so.'

'But that is so,' said Lymond. 'How could I do my work otherwise? — Dorothy Dunnett

The war between England and Scotland was in its eighth year and there had been no raid for ten days: it had seemed possible to get married in peace. — Dorothy Dunnett

Philippa drew a deep breath, and found relief in expelling it. 'Do you think,' she said carefully, 'that someone is going to be goaded into doing something soon?' There was a long pause. 'I think,' said Jerott at length, equally carefully, 'that someone is going to the court of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and someone else is going to Flaw Valleys, England, to Mother.' Which summed it up, Philippa supposed, with regret. — Dorothy Dunnett

War had given Francis his respite, and success had brought him his final reward: the freedom he wished from his marriage. The licence, if he desired it, to go back to Russia. The knowledge, one supposed, that, severed from Philippa, he could allow the past to lie in peace, and cease troubling him. — Dorothy Dunnett

We're all runts and bastards of one sort or another. — Dorothy Dunnett

There is a Russian proverb,' Nepeja said. 'Beat your shuba, and it will be warmer; beat your wife and she shall be sweeter.'

There was a brief silence, while his hearers considered the analogy. 'Beat your brother and he shall be deader?' at length Danny said. — Dorothy Dunnett

Be kind to her when she comes back. Her love is not only for children but for humanity. She will be a good-hearted and magnificent zealot one day. As her mother is now.
Goodbye, Kate. And below he had signed as he rarely did, with his Christian name. — Dorothy Dunnett

He's asked Master Zitwitz to leave the duke and travel with him as household controller to the Ambassador's residence in Turkey.'

Philippa Somerville blew her nose sharply. 'On the strength of his sweet cherry sauce?'

'On the strength, I think, of that handy right uppercut,' said Jerott. — Dorothy Dunnett

I would give you my soul in a blackberry pie; and a knife to cut it with. — Dorothy Dunnett

Habits are the ruin of ambition, of initiative, of imagination. — Dorothy Dunnett

I do admire efficiency,' said Marthe. 'But how tedious it can be in excess. — Dorothy Dunnett

I devised a somewhat arbitrary way out of my own difficulties that evening. — Dorothy Dunnett

Fools make news, and wise men carry it. — Dorothy Dunnett

our childhood is over now, Marshal. Mankind can survive very well without an intimate study of your susceptibilities but not, unfortunately, without your other functions and talents. Do you think I bring any child into the world to live for himself alone? — Dorothy Dunnett

Why are you here?"

Silence. Then the boy said slowly, "Because I admire you. — Dorothy Dunnett

Lymond said gently, Let us bathe in moral philosophy, as in a living river. Double-dealing is my business. — Dorothy Dunnett

One battle in twelve might be won by a brilliant military stratagem. The rest stood or fell by somebody's blunders. Only rarely, there came the feel of a great campaign evolved by a stylist: imaginative, comprehensive, irresistible. — Dorothy Dunnett

We've had a deal of bad poetry, haven't we? Suggesting the climax to this thrilling and literary spectacle. The Olla Podrida, my sweet-hearts, will now be set on the fire. — Dorothy Dunnett

There was a silence. Then: 'What you are saying,' said Philippa slowly, 'is that the child Khaireddin would be better unfound?' The Dame de Doubtance said nothing. 'Or are you saying,' pursued Philippa, inimical from the reedy brown crown of her head to her mud-caked cloth stockings, 'that you and I and Lymond and Lymond's mother and Lymond's brother and Graham Malett would be better off if he weren't discovered?'

'Now that,' said the Dame de Doubtance with satisfaction, 'is precisely what I was saying.'

'How can I find him?' said Philippa. — Dorothy Dunnett

I don't like to see things done badly on either. At the moment, I am tired of journeys. It is time I arrived somewhere. — Dorothy Dunnett

Lymond said, 'Have I been talking?'

'We all have, in nightmares. But yours have not been about the sea. — Dorothy Dunnett

Once before, Jerott had seen him like that, in Algiers. He had seen him as he was now, with every skill of mind and body tuned to the ultimate pitch in pursuit of one object. Francis Crawford like that was uncontrollable and very close to invincible. But not invincible. And not impervious to the reckoning afterwards. — Dorothy Dunnett

Tact,' Lymond said, 'is the name you should have upon your tombstone. — Dorothy Dunnett

Man is a being of varied, manifold and inconstant nature. And woman, by God, is a match for him. — Dorothy Dunnett

To pass over grief, they say, the Italian sleeps; the Frenchman sings; the German drinks; the Spaniard laments, and the Englishman goes to plays. What then does the Scot?' To Jerott's mind sprang, unbidden, a picture of the sword Archie Abernethy was trying to clean at this moment below.

'This one,' he said, 'kills. — Dorothy Dunnett

A man of over thirty might be held to be at the height of his powers, but not necessarily of his wisdom. — Dorothy Dunnett

Raveand Rhamnusia, Goddes of Dispyte,' said Lymond acidly. 'I am trying to get you home, vide the shiten shepherd and the clene shepe, with your woolly chops spotless. The only drawback to date is that the bloody sheep is going to have to carry the shepherd, so far as I can see. — Dorothy Dunnett

Intentions, yours or anyone else's, don't matter; they never matter and never excuse. — Dorothy Dunnett

When Philippa had first demanded his help in eluding Kate and travelling to St Mary's, he had indignantly refused. He was there now because he had discovered, to his astonishment, that she was desperate, and perfectly capable of going without him. Why she had got it into her young head she must see this man Crawford, Cheese-wame didn't know. But after pointing out bitterly that (a) he would lose his job; (b) the rogues in the Debatable would kill them, (c) that she would catch her death of cold and (d) that Kate would never speak to either of them again, he went, his belt filled with knives and her belongings as well as his own in the two saddlebags behind his powerful thighs, while Philippa rode sedately beside him on her smaller horse, green with excitement, with her father's pistol tied to her waist like a ship's log and banging against her thin knees. — Dorothy Dunnett

I," said Lymond, in the voice unmistakably his which honeyed his most lethal thoughts, "I am a narwhal looking for my virgin. I have sucked up the sea like Charybdis and failing other entertainment will spew it three times daily, for a fee. — Dorothy Dunnett

Modern war is fought by a number of strong, sweaty horsemen with constipation, who have their eyes on power, on wealth and on glory, and who obey the rules just when it pleases them. — Dorothy Dunnett

She gave up combing her hair, which the salt air had reduced to a kind of scrim of brown hessian, and, lying down, proceeded to keep her fingernails short in the way Kate admired least. Then she overslept. — Dorothy Dunnett

A versatile commodity, death; except for those suffering it. — Dorothy Dunnett

Jerott's voice was stony. 'I am prepared to go wherever I can be of most help. I meant only that I expect to be too occupied to give the attention I ought to Mile Marthe's safety. I think M. Gaultier should come with us.'

'Then who,' said Lymond agreeably, 'do you suggest looks after the spinet?'

'Onophrion?'

'Jerott,' said Lymond, with the thinnest edge beginning to show in his voice. — Dorothy Dunnett

If I can't be personal, I don't want to argue," said his hostess categorically. "I may be missing your points, but you're much too busy dodging mine. — Dorothy Dunnett

It was a tragic and annihilating war, in which intellect fought naked with intellect, and the blows fell not upon the mind but upon the soul. — Dorothy Dunnett

I made one mistake. Who doesn't? But I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands. Of course it left me deformed and unserviceable, defective and dangerous to associate with. ... But what in God's name has happened to charity? ... Self-interest guides me like the next man but not invariably; not all the time. I use compassion more than you do; I have loyalties and I keep by them; I serve honesty in a crooked way, but as best I can; and I don't plague my debtors or even make them aware of their debt. ... Why is it so impossible to trust me? — Dorothy Dunnett

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

Quarrelling with the Prince of Barrow was like fighting a curtain. Robin Stewart gave up. — Dorothy Dunnett

What he wanted was very near. It was typical of the monstrous, egregious, laughable irony which dominated his life that with every dragging lift of his arms, he should be saying over and over, 'Not yet.' — Dorothy Dunnett

What is there but untruth and heartbreak wherever you go? — Dorothy Dunnett

Humility is a virtue Scotsmen require to be taught. — Dorothy Dunnett

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

Discomfort without hope of betterment is not a great springboard. — Dorothy Dunnett

I could see you drop dead this minute from paralysis of the brain cells and burst into uninhibited applause. — Dorothy Dunnett

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

You did not expect human values from a machine. You did not grow angry with a machine, or be disappointed or feel betrayed by it. You treated it with detachment and curiosity, as you would any soul-deprived object, and if it kicked you in the teeth, you side-stepped and kicked it back, harder. — Dorothy Dunnett

I have fallen out of the habit of talking to brothers,' Lymond said. — Dorothy Dunnett

My dear boy, in Ireland the midwife uses one hand to hold the baby's best fighting arm from the font water, and grips its jaws with the other lest the goes to litigation about it. Says O'LiamRoe — Dorothy Dunnett

Only common mortals like the Somervilles have good old rotten hates, dear,' said her mother. 'Sir Graham manages to love everybody and wouldn't know what you're talking about. Have a bun.'

'He doesn't love the Turks,' said Philippa. 'He kills them.'

'That isn't hate,' said Kate Somerville. 'That's simply hoeing among one's principles to keep them healthy and neat. I'm sure he would tell you he bears them no personal grudge; and they think they're going to Paradise anyway, so it does everyone good. — Dorothy Dunnett

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

You choose to play God, and the Deity points out that the post is already adequately filled. — Dorothy Dunnett

Swirling furiously among the stairs and corridors of her exquisite home like a small and angry white bat Sybilla, Dowager Lady Culter, was not above spitting at her unfortunate son when he chose to sit down in his own great hall to take his boots off. 'If Madge Mumblecrust comes down those stairs once again for a morsel of fowl's liver with ginger, or pressed meats with almond-milk, I shall retire to a little wicker house in the forest and cast spells which will sink Venice into the sea for ever, and Madame Donati with it. The Church,' said Sybilla definitely, 'should excommunicate girls who do not replace lids on sticky jars and wash their hair every day with the best towels. — Dorothy Dunnett

Intelligence is the only indispensable commodity in life or in warfare. If you think otherwise, go live in a hut with a poet. The rest of us will do our best to defend you. — Dorothy Dunnett

Because,' said Crawford, as if he hadn't spoken, 'you ought to remember that Philippa has been trained in Turkey and will expect certain standards if you mean to make an impression, whether as her first client or her bigamous husband. I could provide some instruction.'

Austin walked to the door.

'Or a demonstration?' said the other man wistfully. — Dorothy Dunnett

Nobility on earth may be earned by the sword, but nobility of the soul must be sought in stony ways and through hard endeavor. I have to tell you to rejoice that you have been chosen. — Dorothy Dunnett