20 quotes
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)
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)
Sir Francis is intermittently pious, as conspicuous sinners tend to be.
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
Riding beneath dark trees at the close of that first day’s travel, they sing; it lifts the tired heart, and dispels spirits lurking in the verges; never underestimate the superstition of the average Englishman.
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
It is better not to try people, not to force them to desperation. Make them prosper; out of superfluity, they will be generous. Full bellies breed gentle manners. The pinch of famine makes monsters.
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
In any well-ordered country, Suffolk said yesterday, the trial of a noblewoman would be conducted in seemly privacy; he had rolled his eyes and said, but my lord, this is England.
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
He sensed in Jane’s tone the peculiar cruelty of women. They fight with the poor weapons God has bestowed – spite, guile, skill in deceit – and it is likely that in conversations between themselves they trespass in places where a man would never trust his footing.
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
Richard hugs him; says, “If she had reigned longer she would have given us to the dogs to eat.”
“If we had let her reign longer, we would have deserved it.”
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
He doesn’t believe the dead need our prayers, nor can they use them. But anyone who knows the Bible as he does, knows that our God is a capricious God, and there’s no harm in hedging your bets.
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
When Gregory says, “Are they guilty?” he means, “Did they do it?” But when he says, “Are they guilty?” he means, “Did the court find them so?” The lawyer’s world is entire unto itself, the human pared away.
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
You should not desire, he knows, the death of any human creature. Death is your prince, you are not his patron; when you think he is engaged elsewhere, he will batter down your door, walk in and wipe his boots on you.
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
Once they were young men of esprit, young men of élan. A quarter of a century has passed and they are grey or balding, flabby or punchy, gone in the fetlock or missing some fingers, but still as arrogant as satraps and with the mental refinement of a gatepost.
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
Thank you for your gallant reminder, Master Sadler, without your advice I might have thought myself sixteen. Ah, do you see, I am an Englishwoman now! I know how to say the opposite of what I mean.
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
Of his cousin Anne he says, “You like to know where you are with a woman. Is she a harlot, or a lady? Anne wants you to treat her like the Virgin Mary, but she also wants you to put your cash on the table, do the business and get out.”
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
We could have put up at a monastery, one of his guard had complained; but no girls in a monastery, I suppose. He had turned in the saddle: “You really think that?” Knowing laughter from the men.
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
What is the nature of the border between truth and lies? It is permeable and blurred because it is planted thick with rumour, confabulation, misunderstandings and twisted tales. Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
All the same: in the village alehouses up and down England, they are blaming the king and Anne Boleyn for the weather: the concubine, the great whore. If the king would take back his lawful wife Katherine, the rain would stop. And indeed, who can doubt that everything would be different and better, if only England were ruled by village idiots and their drunken friends?
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
The word “however” is like an imp coiled beneath your chair. It induces ink to form words you have not yet seen, and lines to march across the page and overshoot the margin. There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one.
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)