Dick Francis Quotes

May I deal with honour
May I act with courage
May I achieve humility

I stood on the outside of disaster, looking in.

one should never assume anything

A jump jockey has to throw his heart over the fence - and then go over and catch it.

The only thing better than getting away with doing a crime was to get someone else convicted for having done it.

How could people, I wondered for the ten thousandth useless time, how could people who had loved so dearly come to such a wilderness; and yet the change in us was irreversible, and neither of us would even search for a way back. It was impossible. The fire was out. Only a few live coals lurked in the ashes, searing unexpectedly at the incautious touch.

Good manners are a sign of strength.

Crime to many is not crime but simply a way of life. If laws are inconvenient, ignore them, they don't apply to you.

Life has a way of kicking one along like a football, or so I've found. Fate had never dealt me personally a particularly easy time, but that was OK, that was normal. Most people, it seemed to me, took their turn to be football. Most survived. Some didn't.

I hadn't had a mother since I was two, and from then until seven I had believed God was someone who had run off with her and was living with her somewhere else ... (God took your mother, dear, because he needed her more than you do) which had never endeared him to me

Writing a novel proved to be the hardest, most self-analyzing task I had ever attempted, far worse than an autobiography: and its rewards were greater than I expected.

Newspapers, I said. I unrolled the Quindle Diary so

But what do you say if you're asked a direct question and you can't tell the truth and you can't tell a lie?'
'You say "how very interesting" and change the subject.

It's people with obsessions who do the real harm in the world.

The dignity of man was everywhere tissue-paper thin.

Tyrants come and go, tyranny is constant.

Everyone journeys through character as well as through time. The person one becomes depends on the person one has been.

If ever you get invited into someone's home,' my father said (as he had been invited five or six times that morning), 'you go into the sitting-room and you say, "Oh, what an attractive room!" even if you think it's hideous.

and thought of Peter and the

They were carried out. He was a tyrant, not so much in the quality of the work he demanded, as in the quantity. There were some thirty horses in the yard. The head lad cared

I guessed life was like that. You gained and you lost, and if you saved anything from the ruins, even if only a shred of self-respect, it was enough to take you through the next bit.

Ones. I could see that I would be inevitably eased out, and not by doubt but by concern.

I wondered to what extent people remained the same as they'd been when very young; if one peeled back the layers of living one would come to the know child.

Mrs Palis­sey and I tend­ed to have the same con­ver­sa­tions over and over and slight­ly too of­ten.

Gawd, he thought furiously, he hadn't expected it to be like this. Just a lousy walk down the yard to give a carrot to the gangly chestnut. Guilt and fear and treachery. They bypassed his sneering mind and erupted through his nerves instead.

Look at everything upside down.Take absolutely nothing for granted.

Love's easy to learn. It's like taking a risk. You set your mind on it and refuse to be afraid, and in no time you feel terrifically exhilarated and all your inhibitions fly out of the window.

I waved back and went in, and began to sort my way through ancient building plans that had been rolled up so long that straightening them out was like six bouts with an octopus.

Most people think, when they're young, that they're going to the top of their chosen world, and that the climb up is only a formality. Without that faith, I suppose, they might never start. Somewhere on the way they lift their eyes to the summit and know they aren't going to reach it; and happiness then is looking down and enjoying the view they've got, not envying the one they haven't.

I looked into his sandy brown eyes, at one with the hair. At the business- like outward presentation of the man who daily printed sneers, innuendo, distrust and spite and spoke without showing a trace of them. 'Off the record,' I said,'bash his face in'.

I gazed at him. He was old enough to know that few things were fair. Most five-year-olds had already discovered it.

The bad scorn the good . . .
and the crooked despise the straight."
~Greville

Chick forced himself to turn his head away, to walk in view of that window, to take the ten exposed steps down to the chestnut's stall.

I smiled into the clever eyes. "Find out for me," I said, "whether Oliver

Yet all we had was here and now, and here and now was always where the struggle toward goodness had to be fought. Toward virtue, morality, uprightness, order: call it what one liked. A long ever-recurring battle.

But one discarded dreams and got dressed, and made what one could of the day.