Home > Work > Conspirata (Cicero, #2)
21 " there is in all men who achieve their life’s ambition only a narrow line between dignity and vanity, confidence and delusion, glory and self-destruction. "
― Robert Harris , Conspirata (Cicero, #2)
22 " The fortunes of war, gentlemen,” he said, “can be cruel and capricious. But that is not the same as treason. "
23 " Maybe so, but in politics how things look is often more important than what they are. "
24 " Cicero’s first law of rhetoric, that a speech must always contain at least one surprise. "
25 " The guests filed out, the women turning toward the tablinum, the men moving into the study. Cicero told me to close the door. Immediately the pleasure drained from his face. “What’s all this about, "
26 " Problems do not queue up outside a statesman’s door, waiting to be solved in an orderly fashion, chapter by chapter, as the books would have us believe; instead they crowd in en masse, demanding attention. "
27 " was yet another lesson to me in politics—an occupation which, if it is to be pursued successfully, demands the most extraordinary reserves of self-discipline, a quality that the naive often mistake for hypocrisy. "