Syme Quotes & Sayings

It seems to me,' said the other, 'That you are simply seeking a pretext to insult the Marquis.'
By George!' said Syme facing round and looking at him, 'What a clever chap you are! — G.K. Chesterton

I? What am I?" roared the President, and he rose slowly to an incredible height, like some enormous wave about to arch above them and break. "You want to know what I am, do you? Bull, you are a man of science. Grub in the roots of those trees and find out the truth about them. Syme, you are a poet. Stare at those morning clouds. But I tell you this, that you will have found out the truth of the last tree and the top-most cloud before the truth about me. You will understand the sea, and I shall be still a riddle; you shall know what the stars are, and not know what I am. Since the beginning of the world all men have hunted me like a wolf - kings and sages, and poets and lawgivers, all the churches, and all the philosophies. But I have never been caught yet, and the skies will fall in the time I turn to bay. I have given them a good run for their money, and I will now. — G.K. Chesterton

When the President asks you to do something, you'd be surprised how keen you are to oblige, Syme said. — Matthew Reilly

In matters of literary and historical appraisement, one cannot operate with the methods of a laboratory or furnish the proof to be demanded in a court of law. The best is only the probable. Any who raise complaint have an easy remedy: to offer something better, something coherent and constructive. — Ronald Syme

Then the man smiled, and his smile was a shock, for it was all on one side, going up in the right cheek and down in the left.
There was nothing, rationally speaking, to scare anyone about this. Many people have this nervous trick of a crooked smile, and in many it is even attractive. But in all Syme's circumstances, with the dark dawn and the deadly errand and the loneliness on the great dripping stones, there was something unnerving in it. There was the silent river and the silent man, a man of even classic face. And there was the last nightmare touch that his smile suddenly went wrong. — G.K. Chesterton

It was a good hanging," said Syme reminiscently. "I think it spoils it when they tie their feet together. I like to see them kicking. And above all, at the end, the tongue sticking right out, and blue a quite bright blue. That's the detail that appeals to me. — George Orwell

Pietas prevailed, and out of the blood of Caesar the monarchy was born. — Ronald Syme

Just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree. — G.K. Chesterton

There is one insane little hope that I cannot get out of my mind. the power of this whole planet is against us, yet I cannot help wondering whether this one silly little hope is hopeless yet.
"In what or whom is your hope?" asked Syme with curiosity.
"In a man I never saw," said the other, looking at the leaden sea.
"I know what you mean," said Syme in a low voice, "the man in the dark room. But Sunday must have killed him by now."
"Perhaps," said the other steadily; "but if so, he was the only man whom Sunday found it hard to kill. — G.K. Chesterton

You don't expect me," he said, "to revolutionize society on this lawn?"
Syme looked straight into his eyes and smiled sweetly.
"No, I don't," he said; "but I suppose that if you were serious about your anarchism, that is exactly what you would do. — G.K. Chesterton

A democracy cannot rule an empire. Neither can one man, though empire may appear to presuppose monarchy. There is always an oligarchy somewhere, open or concealed. — Ronald Syme

Individuals capture attention and engross history, but the most revolutionary changes in Roman politics were the work of families or of a few men. — Ronald Syme

Sunday is a fixed star," he said.
"You shall see him a falling star," said Syme, and put on his hat.
The decision of his gesture drew the Professor vaguely to his feet.
"Have you any idea," he asked, with a sort of benevolent bewilderment, "exactly where you are going?"
"Yes," replied Syme shortly, "I am going to prevent this bomb being thrown in Paris."
"Have you any conception how?" inquired the other.
"No," said Syme with equal decision. — G.K. Chesterton

I shall approach. Before taking off his hat, I shall take off my own. I shall say, "The Marquis de Saint Eustache, I believe." He will say, "The celebrated Mr. Syme, I presume." He will say in the most exquisite French, "How are you?" I shall reply in the most exquisite Cockney, "Oh, just the Syme."'
'Oh shut it ... what are you really going to do?'
'But it was a lovely catechism! ... Do let me read it to you. It has only forty-three questions and answers, some of the Marquis's answers are wonderfully witty. I like to be just to my enemy.'
'But what's the good of it all?' asked Dr. Bull in exasperation.
'It leads up to the challenge ... when the Marquis as given the forty-ninth reply, which runs
'
'Has it ... occurred to you ... that the Marquis may not say all the forty-three things you have put down for him?'
'How true that is! ... Sir, you have a intellect beyond the common. — G.K. Chesterton

You spoke just now of having a religion. Is it really true that you
have one?"
"Oh," said Syme with a beaming smile, "we are all Catholics now."
"Then may I ask you to swear by whatever gods or saints your religion
involves that you will not reveal what I am now going to tell you to any
son of Adam, and especially not to the police? Will you swear that! If
you will take upon yourself this awful abnegation if you will consent
to burden your soul with a vow that you should never make and a
knowledge you should never dream about, I will promise you in return
"
"You will promise me in return?" inquired Syme, as the other paused.
"I will promise you a very entertaining evening." Syme suddenly took off his hat. — G.K. Chesterton

The airliner-sized dragon blew apart in a monumental spray of blood and pulp. Great chunks of flesh the size of boulders rained down from the sky.
"The empire is striking back," Ambassador Syme observed, peering out the window beside CJ. — Matthew Reilly

Perfectly," replied Syme; "always be comic in a tragedy. — G.K. Chesterton

I tell you," went on Syme with passion, "that every time a train comes in I feel that it has broken past batteries of besiegers, and that man has won a battle against chaos. You say contemptuously that when one has left Sloane Square one must come to Victoria. I say that one might do a thousand things instead, and that whenever I really come there I have the sense of hairbreadth escape. And when I hear the guard shout out the word 'Victoria,' it is not an unmeaning word. It is to me the cry of a herald announcing conquest. It is to me indeed 'Victoria'; it is the victory of Adam. — G.K. Chesterton

Syme had ceased to exist: he had never existed. — George Orwell

There are degrees of seriousness," replied Syme. "I have never doubted that you were perfectly sincere in this sense, that you thought what you said well worth saying, that you thought a paradox might wake men up to a neglected truth. — G.K. Chesterton

Well, if I am not drunk, I am mad," replied Syme with perfect calm; "but I trust I can behave like a gentleman in either condition. — G.K. Chesterton

Women have their uses for historians. — Ronald Syme

The difference between the Japanese and the American is summed up in their opposite reactions to the proverb (popular in both nations), "A rolling stone gathers no moss." Epidemiologist S. Leonard Syme observes that to the Japanese, moss is exquisite and valued; a stone is enhanced by moss; hence a person who keeps moving and changing never acquires the beauty and benefits of stability. To Americans, the proverb is an admonition to keep rolling, to keep from being covered with clinging attachments. — Carol Tavris

There was one special thing you promised me at the beginning of the affair, and which you have certainly given me by the end of it."
"What do you mean?" cried the chaotic Gregory. "What did I promise you?"
"A very entertaining evening," said Syme, and he made a military salute with his sword-stick as the steamboart slid away. — G.K. Chesterton

The noble heart will find no shortage of places to offer itself in martyrdom, but you cannot die on every battlefield."

~ Duncan Sinclair, from The Outcast Highlander — R.L. Syme

Syme felt moved to spring up and leap over the balcony. When the President's eyes were on him he felt as if he were made of glass. He had hardly the shred of a doubt that in some silent and extraordinary way Sunday had found out that he was a spy. He looked over the edge of the balcony, and saw a policeman, standing abstractedly just beneath, staring at the bright railings and the sunlit trees. — G.K. Chesterton

Syme strolled with her to a seat in the corner of the garden, and continued to pour out his opinions. For he was a sincere man, and in spite of his superficial airs and graces, at root a humble one. And it is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely. He — G.K. Chesterton

It is you who are unpoetical," replied the poet Syme. "If what you say of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic as your poetry. The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it. We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it not also epical when man with one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street or to Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this, that he does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria. No, take your books of mere poetry and prose; let me read a time table, with tears of pride. Take your Byron, who commemorates the defeats of man; give me Bradshaw, who commemorates his victories. Give me Bradshaw, I say! — G.K. Chesterton

It never occurred to him to be spiritually won over to the enemy. Many moderns, inured to a weak worship of intellect and force, might have wavered in their allegiance under this oppression of a great personality ... But this was a kind of modern meanness to which Syme could not sink even in his extreme morbidity. Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; but he was not coward enough to admire it. — G.K. Chesterton

If we are calm," replied the policeman, "it is the calm of organized resistance."
"Eh?" said Syme, staring.
"The soldier must be calm in the thick of the battle," pursued the policeman. "The composure of an army is the anger of a nation. — G.K. Chesterton

Cabinet is a conscious, explicit attempt to portray the Doctor himself as myth. "He's a mischief, a leprechaun, a boojum," says one character, bookseller and collector of incunabula, Syme. "The Doctor is a myth. He's straight out of Old English folklore, typical trickster figure really."29 Neither part of an ongoing narrative, nor specifically located within the series' past, Cabinet is in a position to challenge the portrayal of the Doctor. — Anthony Burdge, Jessica Burke, Kristine Larsen

Do you see this lantern? cried Syme in a terrible voice.'Do you see the cross carved on it, and the flame inside? You did not make it. You did not light it. Better men than you, men who could believe and obey, twisted the entrails of iron and preserved the legend of fire. There is not a street you walk on, there is not a thread you wear, that was not made as this lantern was, by denying your philosophy of dirt and rats. You can make nothing. You can only destroy. You will destroy mankind, you will destroy the world. Let that suffice you. Yet this one old Christian lantern you shall not destroy. It shall go where your empire of apes will never have the wit to find it. — G.K. Chesterton

The strength and vitality of an empire is frequently due to the new aristocracy from the periphery. — Ronald Syme

What are we going to do?" asked the Professor.
"At this moment," said Syme, with a scientific detachment, "I think we are going to smash into a lamppost. — G.K. Chesterton

Is," said Syme serenely, "the truth is I am a Sabbatarian. — G.K. Chesterton

An artist is identical with an anarchist,' he cried. 'You might transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an artist. The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything. He sees how much more valuable is one burst of blazing light, one peal of perfect thunder, than the mere common bodies of a few shapeless policemen. An artist disregards all governments, abolishes all conventions. The poet delights in disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be the Underground Railway.'
'So it is,' said Mr. Syme.
'Nonsense!' said Gregory, who was very rational when any one else attempted paradox. — G.K. Chesterton

I really have no experience," he began. "No one has any experience," said the other, "of the Battle of Armageddon." "But I am really unfit - " "You are willing, that is enough," said the unknown. "Well, really," said Syme, "I don't know any profession of which mere willingness is the final test." "I do," said the other - "martyrs. I am condemning you to death. Good day. — G.K. Chesterton

The poet will be discontented even in the streets of heaven. The poet is always in revolt."
"There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick. — G.K. Chesterton

The custom of prefixing or appending to historical narratives an estimate of the character and personality of the principal agent is of doubtful advantage at the best of times - it either imparts a specious unity to the action or permits apology or condemnation on moral and emotional grounds. — Ronald Syme

The Augustus of history and panegyric stands aloof and alone, with all the power and all the glory. But he did not win power and hold it by his own efforts alone: was the ostensible author and prime agent in the policy of regeneration merely perhaps carrying out the instructions of a concealed oligarchy or the general mandate of his adherents? — Ronald Syme

Crassus was in the habit of maintaining that nobody should be called rich who was not able to maintain an army on his income. — Ronald Syme