“If you're a sailor, best not know how to swim. Swimming only prolongs the inevitable—if the sea wants you and your time has come.”
“I'm saying that some men are saints. Some are happy being meek and humble and unambitious. Some men are born content to be second-best.”
“Gods are like people. They believe anything if you tell them right way.”
“I'll thank you to remember that not so many years ago men were burned at the stake just for saying the earth went round the sun!”
“If you smile when you lose, then you win in life.”
“So easy now that Elder Sister has explained to her what all young girls in houses are taught—that with care and meticulous acting and tears of pretended pain and fear, and the final modest telltale stains cautiously placed, a girl can, if necessary, be virgin ten times for ten different men.”
“all the people have a right to vote, and no single man ever controls the destiny of any nation, either by divine right or by right of stupid votes of a stupid electorate.”
“Godrot opium, he thought. But he knew that his life was inexorably tied to opium—and that without it neither The Noble House nor the British Empire could exist.”
“You live by the lash and you'll die by it.”
“Let's compete freely. Goddam tariffs! Free trade and free seas—that's what's right!”
“Если ты улыбаешься, проигрывая, тогда ты выиграешь в жизни.”
“Without trade the world will become what it was once—a hell where only the strongest arm and the heaviest lash was law. The meek will never inherit the earth. Aye, but at least they can be protected by law to live out their lives as they wish.”
“Only a real man has the right to stand at the pinnacle.”
“„Слава богу, че вече не съм толкова млад — помисли състрадателно Струан. — Сега знам, че любовта е като морето — понякога спокойна, а понякога бурна. Опасна е, красива, смъртоносна, животворна. Но никога постоянна, а променлива. И уникална само за един кратък миг в очите на времето.”
“Fallibility in a leader is very trying. Isn’t it? They spill so much of other people’s blood.”
“love is like the sea, sometimes calm and sometimes stormy; it’s dangerous, beautiful, death-dealing, life-giving. But never permanent, everchanging.”
“There can only be one Tai-Pan.”
“The Scots knew that the burning of a cross was a summons to the clan, and to all the kinsmen of all kindred clans: a summons to rally to the cross for battle. And the burning cross was raised only by the chief of the clan. By ancient law, once raised, the burning cross committed the clan to defend the land unto the end of the clan.”
“The time be gone forever when the like of me’s to suck thy arse ’cause of a poxy title which like as not were gifted first to a king’s whore, a king’s bastard, or buyed by knife in a king’s back.”
“only the emperor among three hundred millions is allowed to use vermilion ink. Imagine that. If Queen Victoria said, ‘From now on, only I am allowed to use vermilion,’ as much as we love her, forty thousand Britons would instantly forswear all ink but vermilion. I would mysel’.”
“When a friendship crumbles, there are only really two things that can bring it back: a shitload of time, or a sincere apology.”
“Yes, she’d changed me, as much as a man with my particular affinities could change. She’d pushed me. She’d walked into my life, five-feet-three inches of fiery independence.”
“Per quanto contraddittorio possa sembrare, non c’è nulla di più vero che chi ha sempre fatto la scelta giusta non sa nemmeno la metà sulla natura e i modi di operare la scelta giusta, di chi ha fatto le scelte sbagliate.”
“I shall always remember the next day for one of the most beautiful experiences I have ever had. As we marched forward we caught sight, after a while, of the gleaming golden towers of a monastery in the far distance. Above them, shining superbly in the morning sun, were tremendous walls of ice, and we gradually realised that we were looking at the giant trio Dhaulagiri, Annapurna and Manaslu.”
“Miró a Gertrudis en busca de ayuda, pero ésta seguía callada, replegada en sí misma como uno de esos moluscos de nombres raros que ofrecían en el Mercado Central las vendedoras de pescado.”
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