79 quotes
He will remember his first sight of the open sea: a gray wrinkled vastness, like the residue of a dream.
Wolf Hall (2009)
It is a sure sign of troubled minds, the habit of quotation.
Wolf Hall (2009)
A lie is no less a lie because it is a thousand years old.
Wolf Hall (2009)
Lent saps the spirits, as of course it is designed to do.
Wolf Hall (2009)
Gambling is not a vice, if you can afford to do it.
Wolf Hall (2009)
Imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you.
Repetition of false teachings does not make them true.
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
You have always regarded women as disposable, my lord, and you cannot complain if in the end they think the same of you.
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
Seven years she schemed to be queen, and God protect us from answered prayers.
Wolf Hall (2009)
Katherine finds him too intimate with his co-legate; anyone who has spent much time with Wolsey, she thinks, no longer knows what honesty is.
Wolf Hall (2009)
For what’s the point of breeding children, if each generation does not improve on what went before?
Wolf Hall (2009)
I don’t suppose she would be a bad wife, for somebody who was prepared to keep her chained to the wall.
Wolf Hall (2009)
The cardinal used to say, the English will forgive a king anything, until he tries to tax them.
Wolf Hall (2009)
His word is just what a diplomat’s word should be: as clear as glass and as unstable as water.
The Mirror & the Light (2020)
She knows adultery is a sin and treason a crime, but to be on the losing side is a greater fault than these.
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
Leases, writs, statutes, all are written to be read and each person reads them by the light of self-interest.
Wolf Hall (2009)
It’s not easy to speak of nonexistence, even if you’ve already commissioned your tomb.
Wolf Hall (2009)
A part of the art of ruling, I suppose, is to know when to shut your ears.
Wolf Hall (2009)
The purpose of ghost stories is extortion, generally: to frighten poor folks into paying for prayers and charms to protect them.
The Mirror & the Light (2020)
Sir Francis is intermittently pious, as conspicuous sinners tend to be.
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)