Quotes from Azincourt

Bernard Cornwell ·  453 pages

Rating: (19.1K votes)


“Shit!” Evelgold added.
“What?” Hook asked, alarmed.
“I just stepped in some.”
“That’s supposed to bring you luck,” Hook said.
“Then I’d better dance in the goddam stuff.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Azincourt


“The first sound was the bowstrings, the snap of five thousand hemp cords being tightened by stressed yew, and that sound was like the devil’s harpstrings being plucked. Then there was the arrow sound, the sigh of air over feathers, but multiplied, so that it was like the rushing of a wind. That sound diminished as two clouds of arrows, thick as any flock of starlings, climbed into the gray sky. Hook, reaching for another broadhead, marveled at the sight of five thousand arrows in two sky-shadowing groups. The two storms seemed to hover for a heart’s beat at the height of their trajectory, and then the missiles fell. It was Saint Crispin’s Day in Picardy. For an instant there was silence. Then the arrows struck. It was the sound of steel on steel. A clatter, like Satan’s hailstorm.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Azincourt


“Latin! The language of God! Or perhaps He speaks Hebrew? I suppose that’s more likely and it will make things rather awkward in heaven, won’t it? Will we all have to learn Hebrew?”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Azincourt


“Who do you serve?” Lanferelle asked.
“Sir John Cornerwailled,” Hook said proudly.
Lanferelle was pleased. “Sir John! Ah, there's a man. His mother must have slept with a Frenchman.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Azincourt


“Fight well," he said distantly, "and remember you are Englishmen!"
"Welshmen," someone intervened. Sir Roger visibly flinched at that and then, without another word, led his three men-at-arms from the church.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Azincourt



“I forgot to mention,” Father Christopher said, smiling seraphically at Sir Martin, “that I am also a priest. So let me offer you a blessing.” He pulled out a golden crucifix that had been hidden beneath his shirt and held it toward Lord Slayton’s men. “May the peace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ,” he said, “comfort and sustain you while you take your farting mouths and your turd-reeking presence out of our sight.” He waved a sketchy cross toward the horsemen. “And thus farewell.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Azincourt


“So you know it was a glorious battle, Hook, in which God favoured the English, but God's favour is a fickle thing.'
'Are you telling me He's not on our side?'
'I'm telling you that God is on the side of whoever wins, Hook.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Azincourt


“Trinity Royal, which was being nuzzled by a dozen small launches nosing into her flank like piglets suckling on a sow.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Azincourt


About the author

Bernard Cornwell
Born place: in London, England, The United Kingdom
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Popular quotes

“I sit on it's edge, looking down at the man who feels like he just materialized out of nowhere. My head still swims with euphoria from the moment...a moment I was just in with one man whilst sleeping next to another. Suddenly feeling dirty, I pull the sheets wrapped in front of my body closer.”
― E.J. Mellow, quote from The Dreamer


“The essence of the evening was captured by a question from the audience. Someone asked: “What would it take to change your worldview?” My answer was simple: Any single piece of evidence. If we found a fossilized animal trying to swim between the layers of rock in the Grand Canyon, if we found a process by which a new huge fraction of a radioactive material’s neutrons could become protons in some heretofore fantastically short period of time, if we found a way to create eleven species a day, if there were some way for starlight to get here without going the speed of light, that would force me and every other scientist to look at the world in a new way. However, no such contradictory evidence has ever been found—not any, not ever.”
― Bill Nye, quote from Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation


“She sits on the iron throne
She is one and three
The dark lady
the redgold lady
The blank lady
oracle
of blood, she who must be
obeyed
forever
Her glass wings are gone
She floats down the river
singing her last song”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle


“إنّ من المحال أن نحصل على كلِّ ما نرغب فيه من الوهلة الأولى.”
― Comtesse de Ségur, quote from Sophie's Misfortunes


“That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

(Sonnet 73 (1609))”
― William Shakespeare, quote from The Complete Sonnets and Poems


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