Quotes from Scaramouche

“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

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

“...it is human nature, I suppose, to be futile and ridiculous.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“Do you know, André, I sometimes think that you have no heart.'
'Presumably because I sometimes betray intelligence.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“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”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“To do what you imply would require nothing short of divine intervention. You must change man, not systems.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“He was suffering from the loss of an illusion.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“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.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“I am afraid, monsieur, you will have to kill me first, and I have a prejudice against being killed before nine o'clock.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“If the windmill should prove too formidable," said he, from the threshold, "I may see what can be done with the wind.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“there is no worse hell than that provided by the regrets for wasted opportunities.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

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

“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.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“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.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“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.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“With you it is always the law, never equity.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“To deal justice by death has this disadvantage that the victim has no knowledge that justice has overtaken him. Had you died, had you been torn limb from limb that night, I should now repine in the thought of your eternal and untroubled slumber. Not in euthanasia, but in torment of mind should the guilty atone. You see, I am not sure that hell hereafter is a certainty, whilst I am quite sure that it can be a certainty in this life; and I desire you to continue to live yet awhile that you may taste something of its bitterness.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“It is a futile and ridiculous struggle—but then... it is human nature, I suppose, to be futile and ridiculous.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“I recognize myself for part of this mad world, I suppose. You wouldn't have me take it seriously? I should lose my reason utterly if I did;”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“You often show yourself without any faculty of deductive reasoning.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“Oh, you are mad!" she exclaimed, quite out of patience.
"Possibly. But I like my madness.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“What a man dares to do, he should dare to confess- unless he is a coward.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“I hate possibilities—God of God! I have lived on possibilities, and infernally near starved on them.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“In life we pay for the evil that in life we do.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“Speed will follow when the mechanism of the movements is more assured.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“Out of his zestful study of Man, from Thucydides to the Encyclopaedists, from Seneca to Rousseau, he had confirmed into an unassailable conviction his earliest conscious impressions of the general insanity of his own species.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“I admit that it is audacious," said Scaramouche. "But at your time of life you should have learnt that in this world nothing succeeds like audacity.”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

“Do you wonder that they will”
― Rafael Sabatini, quote from Scaramouche

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Popular quotes

“[…] perché esistono dei mostri che nessuno può vincere in un combattimento faccia a faccia.”
― Czesław Miłosz, quote from Native Realm: A Search for Self-Definition

“It is easier to conquer than to administer. With enough leverage, a finger could overturn the world; but to support the world, one must have the shoulders of Hercules.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, quote from The Social Contract

“My father was taking me as seriously as the Ringolds were, but not with Ira’s political fearlessness, with Murray’s literary ingenuity, above all, with their seeming absence of concern for my decorum, for whether I would or would not be a good boy. The Ringolds were the one-two punch promising to initiate me into the big show, into my beginning to understand what it takes to be a man on the larger scale. The Ringolds compelled me to respond at a level of rigor that felt appropriate to who I now was. Be a good boy wasn’t the issue with them. The sole issue was my convictions. But then, their responsibility wasn’t a father’s, which is to steer his son away from the pitfalls. The father has to worry about the pitfalls in a way the teacher doesn’t. He has to worry about his son’s conduct, he has to worry about socializing his little Tom Paine. But once little Tom Paine has been let into the company of men and the father is still educating him as a boy, the father is finished. Sure, he’s worrying about the pitfalls—if he wasn’t, it would be wrong. But he’s finished anyway. Little Tom Paine has no choice but to write him off, to betray the father and go boldly forth to step straight into life’s very first pit. And then, all on his own—providing real unity to his existence—to step from pit to pit for the rest of his days, until the grave, which, if it has nothing else to recommend it, is at least the last pit into which one can fall.”
― Philip Roth, quote from I Married a Communist

“Women are like posters. One is stuck on top of another and covers it completely. Perhaps just for a moment, when the paste is still soft and the paper still wet and slightly transparent, you may still catch a vague impression of the splashes of color of the first, but soon there's no more trace of it. Then, when the second one is removed, both come away together, leaving your memory and your heart as blank as a wall.”
― Pitigrilli, quote from Cocaine

“Methinks marriage has made my brother soft,” Alaric replied. “ ’Tis a shame when a puny lass has to save his arse.”
― Maya Banks, quote from Never Love a Highlander

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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