I Am Delicate Quotes & Sayings

I am very strong & robust & not of the delicate sex nor of the fair but of the deficent in look ... — Marjorie Fleming

I know the evil of my ancestors because I am those people. The balance is delicate in the extreme. I know that few of you who read my words have ever thought about your ancestors this way. It has not occurred to you that your ancestors were survivors and that the survival itself sometimes involved savage decisions, a kind of wanton brutality which civilized humankind works very hard to suppress. What price will you pay for that suppression? Will you accept your own extinction?
-The Stolen Journals — Frank Herbert

I am a great foe of favoritism in public life, in private life, and even in the delicate relationship of an author to his works. — Joseph Conrad

And the reason I am writing this
on the back of a manila envelope
now that they have left the train together
is to tell you that when she turned
to lift the large, delicate cello
onto the overhead rack,
I saw him looking up at her
and what she was doing
the way the eyes of saints are painted
when they are looking up at God
when he is doing something remarkable,
something that identifies him as God. — Billy Collins

I read, with a kind of hopeless envy, histories and legends of people of our craft who "do not write for money." It must be a pleasant experience to be able to cultivate so delicate a class of motives for the privilege of doing one's best to express one's thoughts to people who care for them. Personally, I have yet to breathe the ether of such a transcendent sphere. I am proud to say that I have always been a working woman, and always had to be ... — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Natures of your kind, with strong, delicate senses, the soul-oriented, the dreamers, poets, lovers are always superior to us creatures of the mind. You take your being from your mothers. You live fully; you were endowed with the strength of love, the ability to feel. Whereas we creatures of reason, we don't live fully; we live in an arid land, even though we often seem to guide and rule you. Yours is the plentitude of life, the sap of the fruit, the garden of passion, the beautiful landscape of art. Your home is the earth; ours is the world of ideas. You are in danger of drowning in the world of the senses; ours is the danger of suffocating in an airless void. You are an artist; I am a thinker. You sleep at your mother's breast; I wake in the desert. For me the sun shines; for you the moon and the stars. — Hermann Hesse

It is a deep red flower that grows on a strong vine. Its leaves are dark and delicate. They grow best in shadowy places, but the flower itself finds stray sunbeams to bloom in." I looked at her. "That suits you. There is much of you that is both shadow and light. It grows in deep forests, and is rare because only skilled folk can tend one without harming it. It has a wondrous smell and is much sought and seldom found." I paused and made a point of examining her. "Yes, I am forced to pick, I would choose selas. — Patrick Rothfuss

Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influencewhich flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there. — Henry David Thoreau

He revealed nothing. He nodded gravely. "I suppose it might be, ma'am, but I was hired to do the job and take the risks." "Figured I'd offer," Thomas said, unwilling to let the matter drop. "You tell me what you figure to do, and I'll be glad to help." "Another time." The marshal tasted his coffee again and looked directly at the girl. "You are new in Sentinel. Will you be staying long?" "No." "Do you have relatives here?" "No." He waited, but no explanation was offered. Fitz Moore was puzzled and he studied her from the corners of his eyes. There was no sound in the room but the ticking of the big, old-fashioned clock. The girl sat very still, the delicate line of her profile bringing to him a faint, lost feeling, a nostalgia from his boyhood when such women as she rode to hounds, when there was perfume on the air, blue grass, picket fences ... — Louis L'Amour

Haply for I am black,
And have not those soft parts of conversation
That chamberers have; or for I am declined
Into the vale of years - yet that's not much
She's gone. I am abused, and my relief
Must be to loathe her. O curse of marriage,
That we can call these delicate creatures ours
And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad
And live upon the vapor of a dungeon
Than keep a corner in the thing I love
For others' uses. Yet 'tis the plague of great ones;
Prerogatived are they less than the base.
'Tis destiny unshunnable, like death. — William Shakespeare

You realize that if you allow me to court you, all your opposition to marriage is going to have to be reconsidered." She smiled, feigning innocence. "What opposition to marriage?" "Excellent." "But I am thinking we should have a long courtship." "Why?" He looked surprised. "Because I find I've developed a taste for adventure." "That sounds dangerous. Not at all in character for a delicate flower." She laughed. "We know I've never been good at being a delicate flower. Besides, it shan't be too dangerous." "How can you be so sure?" She smiled brilliantly at him, taking his breath away. "Because, on my next adventure, I'll have you by my side." He — Sarah MacLean

If I have not been completely honest with you, it is only because I know a great deal of things that you do not want to know. I am going to ask that you trust me when I tell you I am trying to make things better. It is an extremely delicate balance and there are a great many factors involved. The best we can do right now is take everything as it comes, and not to worry ourselves over things that have happened, or things that are to come. — Erin Morgenstern

It's a delicate thing for me, with how involved I am in social media and being a part of people's lives in a way that they want me to. — Vera Farmiga

I FEEL AS THOUGH I AM EATING the alphabet. Twenty-six courses of letters, each with its own distinctive flavor. It is inevitable that some letters will taste delicious, others not so much. Some will have a delicate flavor, others will be more like a hearty peasant stew. — Ammon Shea

My time is limited. It is thence that one fine day, when all nature smiles and shines, the rack lets loose its black unforgettable cohorts and sweeps away the blue for ever. My situation is truly delicate. What fine things, what momentous things, i am going to miss through fear, fear of falling back into the old error, fear of not finishing in time, fear of revelling, for the last time, in a last outpouring of misery, impotence and hate. The forms are many in which the unchanging seeks relief from its formlessness. — Samuel Beckett

I am grateful that their unyielding passion is completely allowed to flow through their delicate fingers and wrists onto their lovely instruments, sharing this on a level which is beyond words, resonating with one's deepest soul. — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

What are you about?" said the vehicle as a panel popped open to reveal delicate components. "I am not accustomed to such usage."

The little man said nothing, but began to rearrange connections and sever some linkages within the autocab's mechanism. The vehicle lurched and then spiraled down to a meadow bordered by trees.

"I will be compelled to summon assist-" said the car, then broke off as Gaskarth made a final adjustment. The autocab dropped the remaining few inches to the grass, and the dwarf twisted the emergency release handle to open the doors. Filidor followed him out of the autocab.

"Who am I?" inquired the car. "Have I a function?"

"Perhaps you are a type of bird," said Gaskarth. "If so, it is your function to fly."

The autocab digested this information briefly, then lifted slightly. "Experimentation tends to support the hypothesis," it said, and flew in widening circles out of their ken. — Matthew Hughes

Tea is an act complete in its simplicity.
When I drink tea, there is only me and the tea.
The rest of the world dissolves.
There are no worries about the future.
No dwelling on past mistakes.
Tea is simple: loose-leaf tea, hot pure water, a cup.
I inhale the scent, tiny delicate pieces of the tea floating above the cup.
I drink the tea, the essence of the leaves becoming a part of me.
I am informed by the tea, changed.
This is the act of life, in one pure moment, and in this act the truth of the world suddenly becomes revealed: all the complexity, pain, drama of life is a pretense, invented in our minds for no good purpose.
There is only the tea, and me, converging. — Thich Nhat Hanh

You act as if I were your enemy.
"You are my enemy. You seek to end the things I love."
And is an ending always bad? it asked. Must not all things, even worlds, someday end?
"There is no need to hasten that end," Vin said. "No reason to force it."
All things are subject to their own nature, Vin, Ruin said, seeming to flow around her. She could feel its touch on her - wet and delicate, like mist. You cannot blame me for what I am. Without me, nothing would end. Nothing could end. And therefore, nothing could grow. I am life. Would you fight life itself?
Vin fell silent.
Do not mourn because the day of this world's end has arrived, Ruin said. That end was ordained the very day of the world's conception. There is a beauty in death - the beauty of finality, the beauty of completion.
For nothing is truly complete until the day it is finally destroyed. — Brandon Sanderson

Shame, child, is for those who fail to live up to the ideal of what they believe they should be." She waved her hand. "It was shame that drove me to my queen, to beseech her aid." Her long, delicate fingers idly moved to the streaks of white in her otherwise flawless red tresses. "But she showed me the way back to myself, through exquisite pain, and now I am here to watch over my dear godson
and the rest of you, as long as it is quite convenient."
Spooky death Sidhe lady," Molly said. "Now upgraded to spooky, crazy death Sidhe lady. — Jim Butcher

If one is the kind of creature I am and wants to do the kind of writing I want to do, an undisturbed bourgeois existence with no distractions seems in order. A single meeting outside the family upsets one's whole inner web, makes one start off on two-days' thinking and weighing, destroys a delicate balance etc. etc ... I now have enough friends to last me a lifetime and that is enough. I am going to close the doors and hibernate at least for a couple of years. I am frightfully depressed about my work. It seems to me perfectly mediocre. — May Sarton

To restore you and myself, I return to my state of garden and shade, cool reality, I hardly exist and if I do exist it's with delicate care. Surrounding the shade is a teeming, sweaty heat. I'm alive. But I feel I've not yet reached my limits, bordering on what? Without limits, the adventure of a dangerous freedom. But I take the risk, I live taking it. I'm full of acacias swaying yellow, and I, who have barely begun my journey, begin it with a sense of tragedy, guessed what lost ocean my life steps will take me to. And crazily I latch onto the corners of myself, my hallucinations suffocate me with their beauty. I am before, I am almost, I am never. And all this I gained when I stopped loving you. — Clarice Lispector

The Normal is the good smile in a child's eyes:-alright. It is also the dead stare in a million adults. It both sustains and kills-like a god. It is the Ordinary made beautiful: it is also the Average made lethal. The Normal is the indispensable, murderous God of Health, and I am his priest. My tools are very delicate. My compassion is honest. I have honestly assisted children in this room. I have talked away terrors and relieved many agonies. But also-beyond question-I have cut from the parts of individuality repugnant to this god, in both his aspects. Parts sacred to rarer and more wonderful gods. And at what length ... Sacrifices to Zeus took at the most, surely, sixty seconds each. Sacrifices to the Normal can take as long as sixty months. — Peter Shaffer

I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them ... — Annie Dillard

We have to protect the bees. If we kill the insects and the bees disappear, we're doomed. The balance is delicate and the health of the plants and animals and consumers is ... Am I putting you to sleep? — Robyn Carr

Certain I am that every author who has written a book with earnest forethought and fondly cherished designs will bear testimony to the fact that much which he meant to convey has never been guessed at in any review of his work; and many a delicate beauty of thought, on which he principally valued himself, remains, like the statue of Isis, an image of truth from which no hand lifts the veil. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Dearest Alexia,
Oh, please absolve me of this guilt I already feel squishing on my very soul! My troubled heart weeps! Oh dear, Ivy was getting flowery. My bones ache with the sin that I am about to commit. Oh, why must I have bones? I have lost myself to this transplanting love. You could not possibly understand how this feels! Yet try to comprehend, dearest Alexia, I am like a delicate bloom. Marriage without love is all very well for people like you, but I should wilt and wither. I need a man possessed of a poet's soul! I am simply not so stoic as you. I cannot stand to be apart from him one moment longer! The caboose of my love has derailed, and I must sacrifice all for the man I adore! Please do not judge me harshly! It was all for love!
~ Ivy. — Gail Carriger

I know that there's a cultural expectation that women be nurturing, delicate flowers. And I am. So delicate. But that doesn't mean I can't write a good, gory murder scene. — Chelsea Cain

Well, now you can see for yourself that she was delicate", said Davey triumphantly. "She's dead. It killed her. Doesn't that show you? I do wish I could make you Radletts understand that there is no such thing as imaginary illness. Nobody who is quite well could possibly be bothered to do all the things that I, for instance, am obliged to, in order to keep my wretched frame on its feet. — Nancy Mitford

I am drawn allways toward you,
Your delicate and distant light,
Face which I have never seen. — Sean Russell

I abhor violence. How many times do I have to say it? I am a delicate. Freakn'. Flower! — Eve Langlais

I perceive myself as rather uninhibited, with a certain mathematical facility and more interest in the broad aspect of a problem than the delicate nuances. I am more interested in discovering what is over the next rise than in assiduously cultivating the beautiful garden close at hand. — Henry Eyring

I am constantly astonished by the people, otherwise intelligent, who think that anything so complex and delicate as a marriage can be left to take care of itself. One sees them fussing about all sorts of lesser concerns, apparently unaware that side by side with them often in the same bed a human creature is perishing from lack of affection, of emotional malnutrition. — Robertson Davies

I want you. There was a time when I may have been able to express the sentiment less crudely, yet it is too late now. I no longer understand how to quiver modestly, how to hide sweet, delicate blushes. Now I am wracked with convulsions, burned by the fires of hell. If I am a virgin, it is only in the most trivial, membranous sense of the word. Please, make my damnation official. I ask only that you rid me of this technicality. — Laura Elizabeth Woollett

And is an ending always bad? it asked. Must not all things, even worlds, someday end?
"There is no need to hasten that end," Vin said. "No reason to force it."
All things are subject to their own nature, Vin, Ruin said, seeming to flow around her. She could feel its touch upon her
wet and delicate, like mist. You cannot blame me for being what I am. Without me, nothing would end. Nothing could end. And therefore, nothing could grow. I am life. Would you fight life itself? — Brandon Sanderson

Sonnet LXXXI
And now you're mine. Rest with your dream in my dream.
Love and pain and work should all sleep, now.
The night turns on its invisible wheels,
and you are pure beside me as a sleeping ember.
No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go,
we will go together, over the waters of time.
No one else will travel through the shadows with me,
only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon.
Your hands have already opened their delicate fists
and let their soft drifting signs drop away;
your eyes closed like two gray wings, and I move
after, following the folding water you carry, that carries
me away. The night, the world, the wind spin out their destiny.
Without you, I am your dream, only that, and that is all. — Pablo Neruda

Shadows of Shadows passing... It is now 1831... and as always, I am absorbed with a delicate thought. It is how poetry has indefinite sensations to which end, music is an essential, since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry. Music without the idea is simply music. Without music or an intriguing idea, color becomes pallour, man becomes carcass, home becomes catacomb, and the dead are but for a moment motionless. — Edgar Allan Poe

I am quite reactionary about Aussies travelling. Why, we've only been here a hundred years. What can be added by going before we are here? - that is not right but for we are here, but only just here. If we don't hold what we have we may never find it again, so delicate a thing it is, yet it gives the appearance of being overpowerful on close examination ... I don't think a change of location can answer our questions. — Joy Hester

Jack. [After some hesitation.] I know nothing, Lady Bracknell. Lady Bracknell. I am pleased to hear it. I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square. — Oscar Wilde

I am not delicate.
I am skinny dipping at 2am;
I am dancing naked under the full moon and playing in the mud.
I am the reverberating echoes of a curse word ricocheting off the steeply sloping mountain you thought I couldn't climb;
I am bare skin in the deepest depths of winter; I am the song of courage, and the melody of freedom you long to sing.
I am a fearless mother.
I am a passionate lover; a devoted friend.
I am the healer, the witch, the nurturing of your wounds.
I am the heat of a wildfire, the rage of a storm.
I am strong.
Delicate things are pretty-cute, even.
But I am not delicate.
I am wild, fierce and unpredictable.
I am breathtaking.
I am beautiful.
I am sacred. — Brooke Hampton

In thought I am living wholly with Theo and Vincent, oh, the infinitely delicate, tender and lovely [quality] of that relation[ship]. — Johanna Van Gogh-Bonger

A general silence prevailed
A silence, which was by nothing interrupted but by the loud and repeated snores of one of the Party. "What an illiterate villian must that man be! (thought I to myself) What a total want of delicate refinement must he have, who can thus shock our senses by such a brutal noise! He must I am certain be capable of every bad action! There is no crime too black for such a Character!" Thus reasoned I within myself, and doubtless such were the reflections of my fellow travellers. — Jane Austen

He pulled out the ring, a small round diamond on a delicate gold band, and placed it on my finger. The students who had witnessed our display began to clap as Parker swung me around and kissed me, his enthusiasm apparent to everyone around us. "I love you," he said with a grin, staring deep into my eyes. "With everything I am." "I love you, too," I whispered back. — T.L. Gray

I myself am quite absorbed by the delicate yellow, delicate soft green, delicate violet of a ploughed and weeded piece of soil. — Vincent Van Gogh

I look at my left
hand it is clever
it is robust & honorable
it is strength and
reliablity. I look
at my right hand
and it is voice,it
is feeling and soft
and forgiving; it
is delicate and
fancy.
One is strong calloused and tempered
the other is art,
ornamental, and
listening. I am both
why should I be
one or the other?
Strings tell a
different tune. — Myself

The president is not at all like the powerful icon I imagined her to be. She's more like I remember Amma: small and delicate with a sari that dances behind her as she walks. Of course, the president is clad in white, the color that shows eternal mourning of a lost child, while Amma never wore white. She wore reds and oranges and deep greens. Colors of celebration, of happiness. Perhaps she wears white now. Now that I am dead to her. — Holly Bodger

I am well aware that many will accuse me of indecorum for presenting these pages to the public; for the experiences of this intelligent and much-injured woman belong to a class which some call delicate subjects, and others indelicate. This peculiar phase of Slavery has generally been kept veiled; but the public ought to be made acquainted with its monstrous features, and I willingly take the responsibility of presenting them with the veil withdrawn. I do this for the sake of my sisters in bondage, who are suffering wrongs so foul, that our ears are too delicate to listen to them. — L. Maria Child

I am delicate and the world is impossibly wrong, is unthinkable and I am not forewarned, forearmed, equipped. I cannot manage. If there was something useful I could do, I would - but there isn't. So I drink. — A. L. Kennedy

Perhaps, in the future, when machines have attained to a state of perfection - for I confess that I am, like Godwin and Shelley, a believer in perfectibility, the perfectibility of machinery - then, perhaps, it will be possible for those who, like myself, desire it, to live in a dignified seclusion, surrounded by the delicate attentions of silent and graceful machines, and entirely secure from any human intrusion. — Aldous Huxley

My sweet rose, my delicate flower, my lily of lilies, it is perhaps in prison that I am going to test the power of love. I am going to see if I cannot make the bitter warders sweet by the intensity of the love I bear you. I have had moments when I thought it would be wise to separate. Ah! Moments of weakness and madness! Now I see that would have mutilated my life, ruined my art, broken the musical chords which make a perfect soul. Even covered with mud I shall praise you, from the deepest abysses I shall cry to you. In my solitude you will be with me. — Oscar Wilde

Why do some people act as if making money offended their delicate minds? I am out for a legitimate profit, and not ashamed of it; the fact that people will pay money for my goods and services shows that my work is useful. — Robert A. Heinlein

You don't need a minute. I can educate you in seconds flat. I'm a man. Not only am I man, but a gay man. Not a chick, not some delicate girl you can seduce. A fucking man!" I pointed to the hallway. "Class dismissed. — S.J.D. Peterson

The groves and thickets of smaller trees are full of blooming evergreen vines. These vines are not arranged in separate groups, or in delicate wreaths, but in bossy walls and heavy, mound-like heaps and banks. Am made to feel that I am now in a strange land. I know hardly any of the plants, but few of the birds, and I am unable to see the country for the solemn, dark, mysterious cypress woods which cover everything. — John Muir

Sadly, it is within the religious domain that the phenomenon of rhetorical hysteria takes its most devastating form. I am aware that, in some minds, this tends to be regarded as a delicate subject. Let me declare very simply that I do not share such a sentiment. There is nothing in the least delicate about the slaughter of innocents. We all subscribe to the lofty notions contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but, for some reason, become suddenly coy and selective when it comes to defending what is obviously the most elementary of these rights, which is the right to life. One of my all-time favourite lines comes from the black American poet Langston Hughes. It reads, simply, 'There is no lavender word for lynch'. — Wole Soyinka

Now, about Markham V. Reynolds (Junior). Your questions regarding that gentleman are very delicate, very subtle, very much like being smacked in the head with a mallet. Am I in love with him? What kind of a question is that? It's a tuba among the flutes, and I expect better of you. The first rule of snooping is to come at it sideways - when you began writing me dizzy letters about Alexander, I didn't ask if you were in love with him, I asked what his favorite animal was. And your answer told me everything I needed to know about him - how many men would admit that they loved ducks? (This brings up an important point: I don't know what Mark's favorite animal is. I doubt it's a duck.) — Mary Ann Shaffer

They think I am glass. But I am not. I am not delicate. I am stone. If they want to break me, they will have a hard time of it. I am unbreakable. — Jennifer Ellision

How do you get your information, Mister Brekker?"
"You might say I'm a lockpick."
"You must be a very gifted one."
"I am indeed." Kaz leaned back slightly. "You see, every man is a safe, a vault of secrets and longings. Now, there are those who take the brute's way, but I prefer a gentler approach - the right pressure applied at the right moment, in the right place. It's a delicate thing."
"Do you always speak in metaphors, Mister Brekker?"
Kaz smiled. "It's not a metaphor."
He was out of his chair before his chains hit the ground. — Leigh Bardugo

The greatest mania of all is passion: and I am a natural slave to passion: the balance between my brain and my soul and my body is as wild and delicate as the skin of a Ming vase. — Hunter S. Thompson

Nanabozho also had the task to learn how to live from his elder brothers and sisters. When he needed food, he noticed what the animals were eating and copied them. Heron taught him to gather wild rice. One night by the creek, he saw a little ring-tailed animal carefully washing his food with delicate hands. He thought, "Ahh, I am supposed to put only clean food in my body."
Nanabozho was counseled by many plants too, who shared gifts, and learned to treat them always with the greatest respect. After all, plants were here first on the earth and have had a long time to figure things out. Together, all the beings, both plants and animals, taught him what he needed to know. The Creator had told him it would be this way. — Robin Wall Kimmerer

Ah, Bluebell, what am I going to do with you?"
Love me. — Sheri Humphreys

Blackberry Beauty has all eyes on her.
She slowly raises her head and smiles at the onlookers.
Her walk is still graceful and delicate.
Her voice is still a whisper.

She says, "I am the beautiful Blackberry. I was made to be way too dark because I am ripe. My beauty comes from my blackberry skin and your ugliness comes from your unripe ones. — Sandra Proto

Coach Slader caught up followed closely by a trail of curious students all as surprised as I at this turn of events.Coach spoke in a delicate voice, like he didn't want to spook a dangerous animal.
"Jayden, what are you doing?"
"She needs medical attention." The guy didn't pause stride.
"Yes, but - "
"I'm taking her to the nurse."
"Okay, but - "
"She's too weak to walk."
I huffed. "I am not. Put me down."
In one swift movement the boy stopped, dumped me on my feet and stepped back. My knees buckled and before you could say "Bob's your uncle" he scooped me up again and kept walking. A chorus of giggles erupted behind us.
"See," he said.I put my arms around his neck and shut up. — A&E Kirk

I am not so delicate as that. And I would only require one thing of you, if our camaraderie is to be cemented."
"Anything," I say, relieved that I haven't lost a chance at my first real friendship.
"If ever I begin to follow you about in the manner of Mirabella to Baldric, be so loyal as to smack me about the face until I regain my senses and dignity. — Quoleena Sbrocca

I know men are delicate origami creatures who need women to unfold them, hold them when they cry. But I am tired of being your savior and I am tired of telling you why. — Ani DiFranco

Meeting you was a disaster."
She raised a brow. "Thank you."
Djel, he was terrible at this. He stumbled on, trying to make her understand. "But I am grateful for that disaster. I needed a catastrophe to shake me from the life I knew. You were an earthquake, a landslide."
"I," she said, planting a hand on her hip, "am a delicate flower."
"You aren't a flower, you're every blossom in the wood blooming at once. You are a tidal wave. You're a stampede. You are overwhelming. — Leigh Bardugo

A most painful matter to me, as you can most readily imagine, Mr Holmes. I have been cut to the quick. I understand you have already managed several delicate cases of this sort, sir, though I presume that they were hardly from the same class of society'
'No, I am descending.'
'I beg pardon?'
'My last client of the sort was a King.'
'Oh really! I had no idea. And which king?'
'The King of Scandinavia'
'What! Had he lost his wife?'
'You can understand, said Holmes suavely, 'that I extend to the affairs of my other clients the same secrecy which I promise to you in yours. — Arthur Conan Doyle