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1 " Oxthorpe stood. He could do nothing else. Her hands stilled, and her smile faded away. She stood and dropped into a curtsy. What did one say in such situations, when one knew a lady disapproved? “Miss Clay,” he said. “Duke.” She’d given the field laborer a happier smile than she gave him. Most everyone else had stopped smiling, too. This was the effect he had on others. He was the Duke of Oxthorpe, and though he did his duty by his title and his estate, he was not beloved. He did not know how to be beloved the way Miss Clay was. "
― Carolyn Jewel , In the Duke's Arms
2 " Oakley won't," the duke said.She turned and blinked. " I beg your pardon." " Lord Oakley. He won't forget to find us rooms. I've known him for years. The only thing that is making this bearable is that he must be dying inside over all this." " You don't like him?" " On the contrary. I've long considered him a friend. It's why I enjoy his misery so much. "
3 " To us, it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg was wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have the with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them. "
― Leo Tolstoy , War and Peace
4 " But to us of a later generation...it is inconceivable that millions of Christian men should have killed and tortured each other, because Napoleon was ambitious, Alexander firm, English policy crafty, and the Duke of Oldenburg hardly treated. We cannot grasp the connections between these circumstances and the bare fact of murder and violence, nor why the duke's wrongs should induce thousands of men from the other side of Europe to pillage and murder the inhabitants of the Smolensk and Moscow provinces and to be slaughtered by them. "
5 " My son will wear the title well, the Duke thought, and realized with a sudden chill that this was another death thought. "
― Frank Herbert , Dune
6 " I cannot say much for this Monarch's Sense--Nor would I if I could, for he was a Lancastrian. I suppose you know all about the Wars between him and the Duke of York who was on the right side; if you do not, you had better read some other History, for I shall not be very difuse in this, meaning by it only to vent my spleen against, and show my Hatred to all those people whose parties or principles do not suit with mine, and not to give information. "
― Jane Austen
7 " After she married the Duke of York, she immediately transformed his life, bringing him love, understanding, sympathy and support for which he had always craved. She inspired him, she calmed him and she enabled him for the first time in his life to believe in himself. Her sense of humor awoke his own, her natural gaiety lightened him. Their marriage was a rare union in which each complemented and enhanced the other. "
― , The Queen Mother: The Official Biography
8 " On Caladan, we ruled with sea and air power," the Duke said. " Here, we must scrabble for desert power. This is your inheritance, Paul. "
9 " And when the Duke of Alva ordered three hundred Citizens to be put to Death together at Antwerp, a Lady who saw the Sight was presently afterwards deliver'd of a Child without a Head. So lives the Power of Imagination even in this Rationall Age. "
― Peter Ackroyd , Hawksmoor
10 " There are four things that make a man fight as you just did," the duke explained to Rumbold. " Love, despair, anger, or insanity." Erik counted them off on his fingers. " Everything to lose, nothing to lose, someone's taken it, or you've lost it. "
11 " MacCaulay clutches his coat tightly and makes towards the elaborate iron gates of the park. He hurries past Apsley House: one time residence of the ‘hero of a hundred fights’ – the Duke of Wellington. His monument to his own great deeds stands yet in front of the drawing room windows. If he had, in modesty, forgotten his own greatness, he might have looked upon it, and been reminded. "
― Emmanuelle de Maupassant , The Gentlemen's Club (Noire #1)
12 " Platitude or not, the crowd erupted into applause, and by acclamation, Kuni Garu became the Duke of Zudi. A few pointed out that titles of nobility really couldn't be handed out in such a democratic fashion, but these killjoys were ignored. "
― Ken Liu , The Grace of Kings (The Dandelion Dynasty, #1)
13 " A curse. Been in our family for generations. The Lees have always been perverts. I shall never forget the unspeakable horror that froze the lymph in my glands when the baneful word seared my reeling brain - I was a homosexual. I thought of the painted simpering female impersonators I'd seen in a Baltimore nightclub. Could it be possible I was one of those subhuman things? I walked the streets in a daze like a man with a light concussion. I would've destroyed myself. And a wise old queen - Bobo, we called her - taught me that I had a duty to live and bear my burden proudly for all to see. Poor Bobo came to a sticky end - he was riding in the Duke Devanche's Hispano Suissa when his falling hemorrhoids blew out of the car and wrapped around the rear wheel. He was completely gutted leaving an empty shell sitting there on the giraffe skin upholstry. Even the eyes and the brain went with a horrible " shlupping" sound. The Duke says he would carry that ghastly " shlup" with him to his mausoleum. "
14 " She laughed, and the duke might actually have smiled, though one could never be certain. "
15 " I have lived recklessly, gambled my income away at the horse races, gone whoring, have been more drunk than sober, beaten men to a pulp with my hands, have had a man’s nose cut off for insulting my father and have been indebted to villains more times than I care to say. But, I do not want to live like this anymore. I want a quiet life with a good woman who will care and love me – not for being the Duke of Monmouth, but for me, Jemmy. "
― Andrea Zuvich , His Last Mistress
16 " Nothing wins more loyalty for a leader than an air of bravura," the Duke said. " I, therefore, cultivate an air of bravura. "
17 " Everyone marries the Duke of Westminster. There are a lot of duchesses, but only one Coco Chanel. "
― Coco Chanel
18 " Condemn you me for that the duke did love me?So may you blame some fair and crystal river, For that some melancholic distracted manHath drowned himself in’t. "
― John Webster , The White Devil
19 " JP shouted, " TELL THEM WHAT YOU JUST DID TO EACH OTHER!" " Um," I said." We kissed," the Duke said." That's kinda gay," Keun said." I AM A GIRL." " Yeah, I know, but so is Tobin," Keun said. "
20 " The Duke has decreed that the Castle is not cold." The gentleman's lips are almost blue from this lack of cold. " And the Duke is right and correct in this as in all things." ...some very beautiful tapestries line the walls, but many of them are also full of holes. Perhaps the Duke has decreed that there are no moths, either. "