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Anthony Hope

Prolific English novelist and playwright Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins especially composed adventure. People remember him best only for book

The Prisoner of Zenda

(1894) and its sequel book

Rupert of Hentzau

(1898). These works, "minor classics" of English literature, set in the contemporaneous fictional country of Ruritania, spawned the genre, known as Ruritanian romance. Zenda inspired many adaptations, most notably the Hollywood movie of 1937 of the same name.


“Yet, unless he sets up as a saint, he need not hate himself for them. He is better employed, as it humbly seems to me, in giving thanks that power to resist was vouchsafed to him, than in fretting over wicked impulses which come unsought and extort an unwilling hospitality from the weakness of our nature.”
Anthony Hope
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“Ah! but a man cannot be held to write down in cold blood the wild and black thoughts that storm his brain when an uncontrolled passion has battered a breach for them. Yet, unless he sets up as a saint, he need not hate himself for them. He is better employed, as it humbly seems to me, in giving thanks that power to resist was given to him ....”
Anthony Hope
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“It is my belief that, given the necessary physical likeness, it was far easier to pretend to be king of Ruritania than it would have been to personate my next-door neighbor.”
Anthony Hope
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“God save the King!"Old Sapt's mouth wrinkled into a smile."God save 'em both!" he whispered.”
Anthony Hope
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“For my part, if a man must needs be a knave I would have him a debonair knave... It makes your sin no worse as I conceive, to do it à la mode and stylishly.”
Anthony Hope
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“His foe was folly and his weapon wit.”
Anthony Hope
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“There are moments when I dare not think of it, but there are others when I rise in spirit to where she ever dwells; then I can thank God that I love the noblest lady in the world, the most gracious and beautiful, and that there was nothing in my love that made her fall short in her high duty.”
Anthony Hope
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“But if it be never - if I can never hold sweet converse again with her, or look upon her face, or know from her her love; why, then, this side the grave, I will live as becomes the man whom she loves...”
Anthony Hope
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“I have an income nearly sufficient for my wants (no one's income is ever quite sufficient, you know).”
Anthony Hope
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