Rafael Sabatini

“It was Pope Innocent III who placed in the hands of the church this terrible weapon of persecution, and who, by the awful severity of his own attitude towards liberty of conscience, of thought, and of expression, afforded to fanaticism and religious intolerance an example that was to be their merciless guide through centuries to come.”

“He still had, you see, illusions about Christians.”

“But they were fated to misunderstand each other.”

“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. 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 very tool used by Fate to shape the destiny of men and nations. Observe it now at work in the affairs of Captain Blood and of some others.”

“Peter Blood judged her- as we are all prone to do- upon insufficient knowledge.”

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

“There was a great historian lost in Wolverstone. He had the right imagination that knows just how far it is safe to stray from the truth and just how far to colour it so as to change its shape for his own purposes.”

“We are all, he says, the sport of destiny. Ah, but not quite. Destiny is an intelligent force, moving with purpose.”

“Regret of neglected opportunity is the worst hell that a living soul caninhabit”

“Life can be infernally complex,’ he said.”

“[Blood upon killing Levasseur] ‘I think that cancels the articles between us,’ he said.”

“He vowed that the thought of her should continue ever before him to help him keep his hands as clean as a man might in this desperate trade upon which he was embarking. And so, although he might entertain no delusive hope of ever winning her for his own, of ever seeing her again, yet the memory of her was to abide in his soul as a bitter-sweet, purifying influence. The love that is never to be realized will often remain a man’s guiding ideal.”

“Laughter broke from them. It spread into a roar of acclamation; for bluff is a weapon dear to every adventurer.”

“It is not human to be wise,’ said Blood. ‘It is much more human to err, though perhaps exceptional to err on the side of mercy.”

“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.”

“And where are the other gentry that were taken?—the real leaders of this plaguey rebellion. Grey’s case explains their absence, I think. They are wealthy men that can ransom themselves. Here awaiting the gallows are none but the unfortunates who followed; those who had the honor to lead them go free. It’s a curious and instructive reversal of the usual way of things. Faith, it’s an uncertain world entirely!”

“Take your time, now,’ said Mr. Blood. ‘I never knew speed made by overhaste.”

“If Mr. Blood had condescended to debate the matter with these ladies, he might have urged that having had his fill of wandering and adventuring, he was now embarked upon the career for which he had been originally intended and for which his studies had equipped him; that he was a man of medicine and not of war; a healer, not a slayer.”

“He was suffering from the loss of an illusion.”

“Truth is so often disconcerting.”

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

“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”

“Only he who is without anything is without enemies.”

“I regret,' said he, 'that I have no cup; but, as you see, I can practise phlebotomy with a bottle.”

“I hope no man will call me timorous; and yet I'ld as soon be called that as rash.”

“Id is fery boedigal!" he said, his blue eyes twinkling. "Cabdain Blood is fond of boedry - you remember de abble-blossoms. So? Ha, ha!”

“You often show yourself without any faculty of deductive reasoning.”

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

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

“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.”

“With you it is always the law, never equity.”

“To do what you imply would require nothing short of divine intervention. you must change man, not systems. Can you and our vapouring friends of the Literary Chamber of Rennes, or any other learned society of France, devise a system of government that has never yet been tried? Surely not. And can we say of any system tried that it proved other than failure in the end? My dear Philippe, the future is to be read with certainty only in the past. Ad actu ad posse valet consecutio. Man never changes. He is always greedy, always acquisitive, always vile. I am speaking of Man in the bulk.”

“I am not one of your repentant sinners, Kenneth. I have lived my life—God, what a life!—and as I have lived I shall die, unflinching and unchanged. Dare one to presume that a few hours spent in whining prayers shall atone for years of reckless dissoluteness? 'Tis a doctrine of cravens, who, having lacked in life the strength to live as conscience bade them, lack in death the courage to stand by that life's deeds. I am no such traitor to myself.”

“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.”

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

“Most of this world's misery is the fruit not as priests tell us of wickedness, but of stupidity....And we know that of all stupidities he considered anger the most deplorable.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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