56 Historical Fiction Quotes

Historical fiction has the unique ability to transport readers to different eras, breathing life into historical events and figures through the artful blend of fact and fancy. The genre captivates with its rich narratives, vivid settings, and complex characters, all while offering glimpses into the past that resonate with contemporary themes. Whether you’re a history buff or a lover of timeless tales, a well-crafted quote from a historical fiction novel can evoke powerful emotions and insights. To celebrate this literary magic, we’ve curated a collection of the top 56 historical fiction quotes that span different times and places, each one capturing the essence of its story and leaving a lasting impression. Dive in and let these memorable lines inspire and transport you to worlds long past.

1. “Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo---which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead.” - Neal Stephenson

2. “Harsh words live in the dungeon of the heart” - Norman Mailer

3. “What, did you think," she asked, laughing as he struggled up the bank, "that I, a Gaulish maiden, could not swim?" "I did not think anything about it," Malchus said; "I saw you pushed in and followed without thinking at all." Although they imperfectly understood each other's words the meaning was clear; the girl put her hand on his shoulder and looked frankly up in his face. "I thank you," she said, "just the same as if you had saved my life. You meant to do so, and it was very good of you, a great chief of this army, to hazard your life for a Gaulish maiden. Clotilde will never forget.” - G.A. Henty

4. “But the tale or narrative set in the past may have its particular time-free value; and the candid reader will not misunderstand me, will not suppose that I intend any preposterous comparison, when I observe that Homer was farther removed in time from Troy than I am from the Napoleonic wars; yet he spoke to the Greeks for 2,000 years and more.” - Patrick O'Brian

5. “They watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction.'Poor Grendel's had an accident,' I whisper. 'So may you all.” - John Champlin Gardner

6. “Think ere you speak” - Valerie Tripp

7. “I was fifteen when I first met Sherlock Holmes, fifteen years old with my nose in a book as I walked the Sussex Downs, and nearly stepped on him. In my defense I must say it was an engrossing book, and it was very rare to come across another person in that particular part of the world in that war year of 1915.” - Laurie R. King

8. “Over time, this unspoken attration continued to blossom, refusing to dwindle or fade, though they had little opportunity to foster or nourish it. Slowly and patiently, Robert's sheer persistence in the chase had revealed his heart, and Charlotte came to realize the nameless thing between them was love.” - Emery Lee

9. “Yes, my boy, you are indeed much faster, bigger, and stronger than me and an altogether superior speciman of God's creation, but I have seen your like before. Only one of us can be master, and it won't be you.” - Emery Lee

10. “Enjoy the ride!” - Emery Lee

11. “Life is volatile.” - Robert J. Pajer

12. “I'm learning not to hope for what I can't control...” - Leila Meacham

13. “They rode for a while in silence, a tiny island in the smoky stream of marching men. Then Lee said slowly, in a strange, soft, slow tone of voice, "Soldiering has one great trap." Longstreet turned to see his face. Lee was riding slowly ahead, without expression. He spoke in that same slow voice. "To be a good soldier you must love the army. But to be a good officer you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love. This is...a very hard thing to do. No other profession requires it. That is one reason why there are so very few good officers. Although there are many good men." Lee rarely lectured. Longstreet sensed a message beyond it. He waited. Lee said, "We don't fear our own deaths, you and I." He smiled slightly, then glanced away. "We protect ourselves out of military necessity, not do not protect yourself enough and must give thought to it. I need you. But the point is, we are afraid to die. We are prepared for our own deaths, and for the deaths of comrades. We learn that at the Point. But I have seen this happen: we are not prepared for as many deaths as we have to face, inevitably as the war goes on. There comes a time..." He paused. He had been gazing straight ahead, away from Longstreet. Now, black-eyed, he turned back, glanced once quickly into Longstreet's eyes, then looked away. "We are never prepared for so many to die. So you understand? No one is. We expect some chosen few. We expect an occasional empty chair, a toast to dear departed comrades. Victory celebrations for most of us, a hallowed death for a few. But the war goes on. And the men die. The price gets ever higher. Some officers...can pay no longer. We are prepared to lose some of us." He paused again. "But never ALL of us. Surely not all of us. But...that is the trap. You can hold nothing back when you attack. You must commit yourself totally. And yet ,if they all die, a man must ask himself, will it have been worth it?” - Michael Shaara

14. “No life form on this planet undergoes such a slow and graceful death as the tobacco leaf.” - Mark McGinty

15. “But just then, for that fraction of time, it seems as though all things are possible. You can look across the limitations of your own life, and see that they are really nothing. In that moment when time stops, it is as though you know you could undertake any venture, complete it and come back to yourself, to find the world unchanged, and everything just as you left it a moment before. And it's as though knowing that everything is possible, suddenly nothing is necessary.” - Diana Gabaldon

16. “I thought I was going to die. I wanted to die. And I thought if I was going to die I would die with you.Someone like you, young as I am, I saw so many dying near me in the last year. I didn’t feel scared. Icertainly wasn’t brave just now. I thought to myself, We have this villa this grass, we should have laindown together, you in my arms, before we died. I wanted to touch that bone at your neck, collarbone,it’s like a small hard wing under your skin. I wanted to place my fingers against it. I’ve always liked fleshthe colour of rivers and rocks or like the brown eye of a Susan, do you know what that flower is? Haveyou seen them? I am so tired, Kip, I want to sleep. I want to sleep under this tree, put my eye againstyour collarbone I just want to close my eyes without thinking of others, want to find the crook of a treeand climb into it and sleep. What a careful mind! To know which wire to cut. How did you know? Youkept saying I don’t know I don’t know, but you did. Right? Don’t shake, you have to be a still bed forme, let me curl up as if you were a good grandfather I could hug, I love the word ‘curl,’ such a slowword, you can’t rush it...” - Michael Ondaatje

17. “Down in the cellar the Gestapo were licensed to practice was the Ministry of Justice called ‘heightened interrogation’. The rules had been drawn up by civilised men in warm offices and they stipulated the presence of a doctor.” - Robert Harris

18. “Selene’s life is a lesson to us that the trajectory of women’s equality hasn’t always been a forward march. In some ways the ancients were more advanced than we are today; there have been setbacks before and may be more in the future.” - Stephanie Dray

19. “She had wanted more than she could have.She had wanted him, and more... she had wanted him to want her.In the name of something bigger than tradition, bolder than reputation, more important than a silly title.” - Sarah MacLean

20. “She says it is a school for bluestockings which, according to her, is really only a fashionable way of saying it is a school for ugly girls who cannot find suitable husbands. To tease her, for I believe it is one of his greatest pleasures in this life, my father bought a pair of blue silk stockings for me the day we received my letter of acceptance. That evening and the next, father and I dined alone.” - Gwenn Wright

21. “True vice, my lady, would frighten us all, if it did not wear the mask of virtue. (p.56)” - Emery Lee

22. “How many times can a heart be shattered and still be pieced back together? How many times before the damage is irreparable?” - Gwenn Wright

23. “A smile is hidden beneath the mustache, it crinkles the corners of his hooded eyes. “I didn’t. I have other business in town and I told my friend I would attend to the matter of his son, as he could not do so himself.” “Very kind of you.” “Yes. I have been looking forward to it for quite some time.” Daddy’s lemonade is almost gone, he sips it carefully, turning his eyes back to the water. “Looking forward to seeing the lad or to conducting your business?” Daddy is toying with him. “Both. You see, I had never actually met his son.” The glass rests against Daddy’s lips, unmoving. Mr. Geyer watches him closely. “But now I have, so I can get on with my,” he fixes his own gaze on the water, as though trying to see whatever it is that has transfixed my father, “business.” - Gwenn Wright

24. “She raised her head and saw a squadron of fighter planes. She stretched her hand high as if she could grab hold and climb away from what she had done, from who she was.” - Sarah Sundin

25. “Brick walls towered over her. Decrepit staircases crowded about her. Nothing had changed. The line there, the lessons there, the rape there. Shouldn't the place be crimson with blood and black with shame?” - Sarah Sundin

26. “Are you a traveling man he asked?” - Nancy B. Brewer

27. “He is dressed in a long, white robe and in his hand is a white cap. I draw up as he passes down the hall; he does not see me. Shortly I hear a horse leaving. There is much I do not know about him, but tonight I know one of his secrets. He is a midnight rider.” - Nancy B. Brewer

28. “Papa was our strength and the very fiber that wove our family together. He was our foundation and our rock, but even rocks, break, given enough stress.” - Nancy B. Brewer

29. “There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles,” Chiron said. “And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?” - Madeline Miller

30. “Even a goat got to be a goat." Esperança's comments about slaves during the triangular slave trade.” - Tanja Kobasic

31. “The end is but a new beginning for the eternal "Ba.” - Inge H. Borg

32. “I knew why earlier generations once believed that the sun circled the earth. Because, in our limited imaginations, that is how we lived our lives. -Mrs. Tuesday's Departure” - Suzanne Anderson

33. “Our house has its back to the sea,' writes Hester in her journal. 'Below us, the ocean spreads to the sky, twitching wide and blue and hungry. One would think it to be infinite. But we, of course, know better.” - Tanya Moir

34. “The urge to draw near to the female silhouette resided deep in the ancient center of a man...” - Kelly O'Connor McNees

35. “If Mary's blood is Spanish, at least it is royal. And at least she can walk straight and has control of her bowels.” - Hilary Mantel

36. “You know what it's like when a cart overturns in the street? Everybody you meet has witnessed it. They saw a man's leg sliced clean off. They saw a woman gasp her last. They saw the goods looted, thieves stealing from the back-end while the carter was crushed at the front. They heard a man roar out his last confession, while another whispered his last will and testament. And if all the people who say they were there had really been there, then the dregs of London would have drained to the one spot, the gaols emptied of thieves, the beds empty of whores, and all the lawyers standing on the shoulders of the butchers to get a better look.” - Hilary Mantel

37. “You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.” - Hilary Mantel

38. “No man as godly as George, the only fault he finds with God is that he made folk with too few orifices. If George could meet a woman with a quinny under her armpit, he would call out 'Glory be' and set her up in a house and visit her every day, until the novelty wore off. Nothing is forbidden to George, you see. He'd go to it with a terrier bitch if she wagged her tail at him and said bow-wow.'For once he is struck silent. He knows he will never get it out of his mind, the picture of George in a hairy grapple with a little ratting dog.” - Hilary Mantel

39. “Go back to bed, Cowan. I want no promises from you.” - Sandi Layne

40. “All good things originate with the Creator God, he'd been taught, and the Song of Life was no exception.” - Sandi Layne

41. “Venne un giorno che alla svolta del sentiero della Palascia la strinsi tanto fra le braccia da toglierle il respiro: alzò gli occhi verso di me e per la prima volta mi guardò in modo diverso, come se avesse capito.” - Maria Corti

42. “Most of [her ashes] fell into the river in a long gray curtain. But some was caught by the wind and blown upward toward the blue spring sky where it swirled a moment in the air, before dissolving into sunlight.” - Kimberly Cutter

43. “We are never prepared for so many to die. So you understand? No one is. We expect some chosen few. We expect an occasional empty chair, a toast to dear departed comrades. Victory celebrations for most of us, a hallowed death for a few. But the war goes on. And men die. The price gets ever higher. Some officers can pay no longer. We are prepared to lose some of us, but never all of us. But that is the trap. You can hold nothing back when you attack. You must commit yourself totally. And yet, if they all die, a man must ask himself, will it have been worth it?” - Michael Shaara

44. “I understand, gentlemen,” John Kennedy said. “If you find that life it’s not easy, let me tell you, death is worse.” - Pierre Marshesso

45. “The others moved in like a wake of vultures, ready to devour their prey. she had seen it on television once. 'Scavengers,' Tatinek called them. They swoop in and feed off the carcasses of animals that are too weak to escape - lots of them on battlefields. This looked the same, only the victim wasn't there, just his writing, his typewriter, and bits of dark paper.” - F.C. Malby

46. “To Jana's mind everybody seemed happy to see BAbichka and resisted returning her, like a misplaced package sent to the wrong address. It was as if the recipient opened it up, knowing it should be returned, but wondering who long they could legitimately keep it before being changed with theft.” - F.C. Malby

47. “As people's hopes soared, Jana felt a tinge of fear.” - F.C. Malby

48. “The sublime beauty was almost hidden withing the castle walls. She believed that the treasured things in life were often hard to find - a pearl in an oyster shell, a kind word in the heat of the moment.” - F.C. Malby

49. “Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,Fill'd with death, ya pens'll hang ya.” - Ron Swan

50. “Everyone is a criminal! We are beset on all sides by antirevolutionary forces. Naturally, then, humans fall into three categories: the criminal, the not-yet-criminal, and the not-yet-caught.” - Catherynne M. Valente

51. “Ann Boleyn...a Renaissance Audrey Hepburn in a little black dress.” - JoAnn Spears

52. “How easy it is to do wrong when there is someone else to blame.” - Jenny Lloyd

53. “All that I was and the world that was mine are gone forever.” - Jenny Lloyd

54. “Humans will never be in charge of this world, as long as dust and weeds do as they please.” - Nancy B. Brewer

55. “The reader may ask how to tell fact from fiction. A rough guide: anything that seems particularly unlikely is probably true.” - Hilary Mantel

56. “Amy wondered if Bonaparte could declare war on Miss Gwen alone without breaking his peace with England” - Lauren Willig