Rafael Sabatini Quotes

A scarlet flame suffused her face. 'You are very insolent,' she said, lamely. 'I've often been told so. But I don't believe it. ~ Rafael Sabatini

I am not one of your repentant sinners, Kenneth. I have lived my life - God, what a life! - and as I have lived I shall die, unflinching and unchanged. Dare one to presume that a few hours spent in whining prayers shall atone for years of reckless dissoluteness? 'Tis a doctrine of cravens, who, having lacked in life the strength to live as conscience bade them, lack in death the courage to stand by that life's deeds. I am no such traitor to myself. ~ Rafael Sabatini

In endeavor itself there is a certain dynamic entertainment, affording an illusion of useful purpose. With achievement the illusion is dispelled. Man's greatest accomplishment is to produce change. The only good in life is study, because study is an endeavor that never reaches fulfillment. It busies a man to the end of his days, and it aims at the only true reality in all this world of shams and deceits. ~ Rafael Sabatini

Speed will follow when the mechanism of the movements is more assured. ~ Rafael Sabatini

But he looks no more than thirty. He's very handsome
so much you will admit; nor will you deny that he is very wealthy and very powerful; the greatest nobleman in Brittany. He will make me a great lady.'
'God made you that, Aline. ~ Rafael Sabatini

But they were fated to misunderstand each other. ~ Rafael Sabatini

And yet she was content to pair off with this dull young adventurer in the tarnished lace! It was, he supposed, the sort of thing to be expected of a sex that all philosophy had taught him to regard as the maddest part of a mad species. ~ Rafael Sabatini

In life we pay for the evil that in life we do. ~ Rafael Sabatini

But I like my madness. There is a thrill in it unknown to such sanity as yours. ~ Book 1, Chapter 9, ~ Rafael Sabatini

It came to Mr. Blood, as he trudged forward under the laden apple-trees on that fragrant, delicious July morning, that man - as he had long suspected - was the vilest work of God, and that only a fool would set himself up as a healer of a species that was best exterminated. ~ Rafael Sabatini

He saw light, dazzling, blinding, and it scared him. ~ Rafael Sabatini

With you it is always the law, never equity. ~ Rafael Sabatini

Laughter broke from them. It spread into a roar of acclamation; for bluff is a weapon dear to every adventurer. ~ Rafael Sabatini

Most of this world's misery is the fruit not as priests tell us of wickedness, but of stupidity ...
And we know that of all stupidities he considered anger the most deplorable. ~ Rafael Sabatini

[W]e are all savages under the cloak that civilization fashions for us. ~ Rafael Sabatini

He still had, you see, illusions about Christians. ~ Rafael Sabatini

A deadly sin that brings no evil material sequel to the satisfaction afforded by committing it is one thing. A deadly sin that gives you the stomach-ache is quite another. ~ Rafael Sabatini

I am very poor - for a know nothing, understand nothing. It is not a calamitous condition until it is realized. ~ Rafael Sabatini

He was recovering his normal self amazingly under the inspiring stimulus of conflict. ~ Rafael Sabatini

A man must sometimes laugh at himself or go mad,' said he. 'Few realize it. That is why there are so many madmen in the world. ~ Rafael Sabatini

Life can be infernally complex,' he said. ~ Rafael Sabatini

He was suffering from the loss of an illusion. ~ Rafael Sabatini

If Mr. Blood had condescended to debate the matter with these ladies, he might have urged that having had his fill of wandering and adventuring, he was now embarked upon the career for which he had been originally intended and for which his studies had equipped him; that he was a man of medicine and not of war; a healer, not a slayer. ~ Rafael Sabatini

It is not human to be wise,' said Blood. 'It is much more human to err, though perhaps exceptional to err on the side of mercy. ~ Rafael Sabatini

The idea of equality is a by-product of the sentiment of envy. Since it must always prove beyond human ower to raise the inferior mass to a superior stratum, apostles of equality must ever be inferiors seeking to reduce their betters to their level. It follows that a nation that once admits this doctrine of equality will be dragged by it to the level, moral, intelletual and political, of its most worthless class. ~ Rafael Sabatini

I recognize myself for part of this mad world, I suppose. You wouldn't have me take it seriously? I should lose my reason utterly if I did; ~ Rafael Sabatini

To do what you imply would require nothing short of divine intervention. You must change man, not systems. ~ Rafael Sabatini

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad." (the novel Scaramouche) ~ Rafael Sabatini

And where are the other gentry that were taken? - the real leaders of this plaguey rebellion. Grey's case explains their absence, I think. They are wealthy men that can ransom themselves. Here awaiting the gallows are none but the unfortunates who followed; those who had the honor to lead them go free. It's a curious and instructive reversal of the usual way of things. Faith, it's an uncertain world entirely! ~ Rafael Sabatini

Regret of neglected opportunity is the worst hell that a living soul can
inhabit ~ Rafael Sabatini

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. ~ Rafael Sabatini

[Blood upon killing Levasseur] 'I think that cancels the articles between us,' he said. ~ Rafael Sabatini

Before World War II, I was living a very cloistered existence, as most cartoonists do. The work I was pouring out did not come from any real, personal life experience; this was all the residue of the accumulation of Rafael Sabatini, O. Henry, all the short-story writers that I'd been reading. ~ Will Eisner

I hate possibilities - God of God! I have lived on possibilities, and infernally near starved on them. ~ Rafael Sabatini

I desire a society which selects its rulers from the best elements of every class and denies the right of any class or corporation to usurp the government itself
whether it be the nobles, the clergy, the bourgeoisie, or the proletariat. For government by any class is fatal to the welfare of the whole, ~ Rafael Sabatini

I am afraid, monsieur, you will have to kill me first, and I have a prejudice against being killed before nine o'clock. ~ Rafael Sabatini

You behold him at the age of four-and-twenty stuffed with learning enough to produce an intellectual indigestion in an ordinary mind. ~ Rafael Sabatini

Do you wonder that they will ~ Rafael Sabatini

Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish. ~ Rafael Sabatini

Mind being the seat of the soul, and literature being the expression of the mind, literature, it follows, is the soul of an age, the surviving and immortal part of it. ~ Rafael Sabatini

Oh, you are mad!" she exclaimed, quite out of patience.
"Possibly. But I like my madness. ~ Rafael Sabatini

From somewhere in the blue vault of heaven overhead came the joyous trilling of a lark, from below the silken rustling of the tideless sea. ~ Rafael Sabatini

There was a great historian lost in Wolverstone. He had the right imagination that knows just how far it is safe to stray from the truth and just how far to colour it so as to change its shape for his own purposes. ~ Rafael Sabatini

Do you know, André, I sometimes think that you have no heart.'
'Presumably because I sometimes betray intelligence. ~ Rafael Sabatini

Id is fery boedigal!" he said, his blue eyes twinkling. "Cabdain Blood is fond of boedry - you remember de abble-blossoms. So? Ha, ha! ~ Rafael Sabatini

We are all, he says, the sport of destiny. Ah, but not quite. Destiny is an intelligent force, moving with purpose. ~ Rafael Sabatini

It is human nature, I suppose, to be futile and ridiculous. ~ Rafael Sabatini

Thirstily he set it to his lips, and as its cool refreshment began to soothe his throat, he thanked Heaven that in a world of much evil there was still so good a thing as ale. ~ Rafael Sabatini

The love that is never to be realized will often remain a man's guiding ideal. ~ Rafael Sabatini

Do you expect sincerity in man when hypocrisy is the very keynote of human nature? We are nurtured on it; we are schooled in it, we live by it; and we rarely realize it.'
– Book 3, Chapter 16 ~ Rafael Sabatini

Truth is so often disconcerting. ~ Rafael Sabatini

Inshore, across the pellucid jade-green waters of the bay, gently ruffled by the north-easterly breeze that was sweetly tempering the torrid heat of the sun, rose the ramage of masts and spars of the shipping riding there at anchor. ~ Rafael Sabatini

Open the history of the past at whatsoever page you will and there you shall find coincidence at work bringing about events that the merest chance might have averted. Indeed, coincidence may be defined as the tool used by Fate to shape the destinies of men and nations. ~ Rafael Sabatini

The moments that followed were full of interest. A stillness, a brooding, expectant stillness, fell upon the company - and it numbered a round dozen - about Lord Gervase's richly appointed board. In the soft candlelight the oval table ~ Rafael Sabatini

Evidently not. They are just governing ~ Rafael Sabatini

Gold has at all times been considered the best of testimonies of good faith ... ~ Rafael Sabatini

It does not make me ridiculous simply to be less foul than those about me. ~ Rafael Sabatini

There remained the sea, which is free to all, and particularly alluring to those who feel themselves at war with humanity. ~ Rafael Sabatini

What a man dares to do, he should dare to confess- unless he is a coward. ~ Rafael Sabatini

I admit that it is audacious," said Scaramouche. "But at your time of life you should have learnt that in this world nothing succeeds like audacity. ~ Rafael Sabatini

To deal justice by death has this disadvantage that the victim has no knowledge that justice has overtaken him. Had you died, had you been torn limb from limb that night, I should now repine in the thought of your eternal and untroubled slumber. Not in euthanasia, but in torment of mind should the guilty atone. You see, I am not sure that hell hereafter is a certainty, whilst I am quite sure that it can be a certainty in this life; and I desire you to continue to live yet awhile that you may taste something of its bitterness. ~ Rafael Sabatini

You fight, you try your best, but if you lose, you don't have to break five racquets and smash up the locker room. You can do those things, but when you've finished, nothing's changed. You've still lost. If something positive came from that, I probably would do it. But I see only negativity. ~ Rafael Nadal

I hope that people learn from my mistake and I hope that the fans forgive me. ~ Rafael Palmeiro

Social justice is a cancer. Social justice means you are ruled by whatever the mob does. What social justice does is destroy individual responsibility. ~ Rafael Cruz

I dont have good luck in the match points. ~ Rafael Nadal

Architects feel empowered to give opinions about politics and sociology and philosophy without knowing much about it. Kind of in the same way that they think they can design furniture or fashion or utensils for dining. ~ Rafael Vinoly

However great your dedication, you never win anything on your own ~ Rafael Nadal

Tennis has had a very positive impact on my life. ~ Gabriela Sabatini

Do you see how commercial obligations bind people more closely than love? ~ Rafael Chirbes

..:One moment can change a life for ever.
One mistake can kill many.
One gesture of love and kindness,
Can make a heart rejoice.
And one word from the heart,
Can impact thousands of lives for generations to come:.. ~ Rafael Garcia

Why do you think there's so many thousands of Cuban doctors in Florida? Because they all had to leave Cuba. Because doctors were rich, and so the [Fidel] Castro government began confiscating all their property. Not much different from this plan to tax you at a higher rate if you and your family, you and your spouse make over $250,000. You're rich! So they must confiscate more your money. ~ Rafael Cruz

If you are playing bad you are going to lose here, on clay, on ice, or on the beach. ~ Rafael Nadal

Everybody likes to say that Roger Federer is the Greatest Player of all time because its so nice to watch him play ... but you have got to throw in Nadal's Mind as well ... and That's the GREATEST OF ALL TIME!!! ~ Rafael Nadal

Some people may think I am still young and still a boy but now I feel like I am a man. ~ Rafael

I was formerly so stuck into plans. I can now live more spontaneously. This I want not yet to give away. ~ Gabriela Sabatini

art is risk made visible ~ Arno Rafael Minkkinen

When one player is better than you, at this moment, the only thing you can do is work, try to find solutions and try to wait a little bit for your time. I'm going to wait and I'm going to try a sixth time. And if the sixth doesn't happen, a seventh. It's going to be like this. That's the spirit of sport. ~ Rafael Nadal

I have an office in Argentina, I go there every day, so I work. ~ Gabriela Sabatini

Arthur Conan Doyle was entranced by the notion of a brilliant detective who can deduce everything a stranger has been up to from the merest clue, and yet can't have a trusting relationship with his closest friend. ~ Rafael Yglesias

Most don't deserve your tears ... and the ones that do will never make you cry. ~ T. Rafael Cimino

With all the great products that are apparently out there that are undetectable, for me to take something like that ... when people take things that now aren't even being tested for, does it make any sense? ~ Rafael Palmeiro

I think you have to play your own game and sometimes people don't realise that the play-maker runs the most kilometres on the pitch! ~ Rafael Van Der Vaart

You could become anyone, including your real self. ~ Rafael Yglesias

Socialism requires that government becomes your god. ~ Rafael Cruz

As God commands us men to teach your wife, to teach your children - to be the spiritual leader of your family - you're acting as a priest. Now, unfortunately, unfortunately, in too many Christian homes, the role of the priest is assumed by the wife. ~ Rafael Cruz

What I experienced in Cuba, I have become a student of what, how communism operates. ~ Rafael Cruz

Santi was a behemoth in the art world, and being known solely by one's first name was a level of fame achieved only by an elite few... people like Napoleon, Galileo, and Jesus... and, of course, the demigods Langdon now heard blaring from Harvard dormitories - Sting, Madonna, Jewel, and the artist formerly known as Prince, who had changed his name to the symbol ?, causing Langdon to dub him 'The Tau Cross With Intersecting Hermaphroditic Ankh. ~ Dan Brown

Baseball gets better for whatever reason. ~ Rafael Palmeiro

My family are really happy here at Liverpool and I am prepared to have my daughter with a Scouse accent, even though it is sometimes a problem for me. ~ Rafael Benitez

The world is chock-full of monsters. ~ Rafael Yglesias

I like pros, especially when it comes to tennis and rent boys" - and here I'm really wondering if the pun on prose consolidates Bruce's feeling toward it versus poetry under the sign of sex, which Bruce sometimes pays for, in order to direct us toward the pleasure of its use-function when monetised, a pleasure seldom associated with poetry, and one that might lead to the company of more pros. He continues: "If I can get a twofer, and the trick looks like Rafael Nadal, I'm in heaven. ~ Andrew Durbin