Rafael Sabatini quotes:

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  • An intelligent observation of the facts of human existence will reveal to shallow-minded folk who sneer at the use of coincidence in the arts of fiction and drama that life itself is little more than a series of coincidences.

  • Life is an ephemeral business, and we waste too much of it in judging where it would beseem us better to accept, that we ourselves may come to be accepted by such future ages as may pursue the study of us.

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

  • Regret of neglected opportunity is the worst hell that a living soul can inhabit.

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

  • 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.

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

  • Gold has at all times been considered the best of testimonies of good faith...

  • 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.

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

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

  • Truth is so often disconcerting.

  • When all is said, a man's final judgment of his fellows must be based upon his knowledge of himself

  • He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

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

  • ...it is human nature, I suppose, to be futile and ridiculous.

  • But they were fated to misunderstand each other.

  • He was suffering from the loss of an illusion.

  • 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.

  • In life we pay for the evil that in life we do.

  • Only he who is without anything is without enemies.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

  • They opposed brute force to reason and philosophy, and battalions of foreign mercenaries to ideas. As if ideas were to be impaled on bayonets!

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