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21 " But Guidobaldo scoffed at his qualms"Do you account my niece a peasant girl?" he asked. "Would you have her smirk and squirm at every piece of flattery you utter? So that she weds Your Highness what shall the rest signify?""I would that she loved me a little," complained Gian Maria foolishly.Guidobaldo looked him over with an eye that smiled inscrutably, and it may have crossed his mind that this coarse white-faced Duke was too ambitious. "
― Rafael Sabatini
22 " 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 , Scaramouche (Scaramouche, #1)
23 " Whilst I’ll take any risk that I must, I’ll take none that I needn’t. "
― Rafael Sabatini , Captain Blood
24 " 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 , The Black Swan
25 " I am afraid, monsieur, you will have to kill me first, and I have a prejudice against being killed before nine o'clock. "
26 " ...it is human nature, I suppose, to be futile and ridiculous. "
27 " But I like my madness. There is a thrill in it unknown to such sanity as yours. ~ Book 1, Chapter 9, "
28 " 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. "
29 " 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. "
30 " He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony. "
31 " But they were fated to misunderstand each other. "
32 " To do what you imply would require nothing short of divine intervention. You must change man, not systems. "
33 " Regret of neglected opportunity is the worst hell that a living soul caninhabit "
34 " 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 "
35 " Truth is so often disconcerting. "
36 " He was suffering from the loss of an illusion. "
37 " There remained the sea, which is free to all, and particularly alluring to those who feel themselves at war with humanity. "
38 " 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. "
39 " Only he who is without anything is without enemies. "
― Rafael Sabatini , Captain Blood Returns
40 " 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. "