Margaret George · 939 pages
Rating: (23.8K votes)
“Thus we use our supposed "knowledge" of others to speak on their behalf, and condemn them for their words we ourselves put in their silent mouths.”
― Margaret George, quote from The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers
“Yet we always envy others, comparing our shadows to their sunlit sides.”
― Margaret George, quote from The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers
“Boredom is that awful state of inaction when the very medicine ― that is, activity ― which could solve it, is seen as odious.
Archery? It is too cold, and besides, the butts need re-covering; the rats have been at the straw.
Music? To hear it is tedious; to compose it, too taxing. And so on.
Of all the afflictions, boredom is ultimately the most unmanning.
Eventually, it transforms you into a great nothing who does nothing ― a cousin to sloth and a brother to melancholy.”
― Margaret George, quote from The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers
“To recount these histories is like unravelling a thread: one means only to tell one little part, but then another comes in, and another, for they are all part of the same garment — Tudor, Lancaster, York, Plantagenet.”
― Margaret George, quote from The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers
“Then it all came together—every particle of discontent, nostalgia, and resistance in England—fusing in the North. The North: two words to describe a territory and a state of mind. England was conquered and civilized from the South upwards, and as one approached the borders of Scotland—first through Yorkshire and then Durham and finally Northumberland—everything dwindled. The great forests gave way first to stunted trees and then to open, windswept moors; the towns shrank to villages and then to hamlets; cultivated fields were replaced by empty, wild spaces. Here the Cistercian monasteries flourished, they who removed themselves from the centers of civilization and relied on manual labour as a route to holiness. The sheep became scrawnier and their wool thicker, and the men became lawless and more secretive, clannish. Winter lasted eight months and even the summers were grey and raw, leading Northumberland men to claim they had “two winters—a white one and a green one.” Since ancient times these peripheral lands had gone their own way, little connected to anything further south. A few great warrior families—the Percys, the Nevilles, the Stanleys—had claimed overlordship of these dreary, cruel wastes, and through them, the Crown had demanded obeisance. But”
― Margaret George, quote from The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers
Margaret George
Born place: in Nashville, Tennessee, The United States
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“My lords.” She curtsied but came up frowning at Westhaven. “Forgive me if I note you rise slowly. Are you well?” The earl glanced at his brother repressively. “My brother is not in good health?” Val asked, grinning. “Do tell.” “I merely suffered a little bump on the head,” the earl said, “and Mrs. Seaton spared me the attentions of the physicians.” Mrs. Seaton was still frowning, but the earl went on, forestalling her reply. “You may tend to your flowers, Mrs. Seaton, and I echo my brother’s compliments: Tea is most pleasant.”
― Grace Burrowes, quote from The Heir
“No matter what, expect the unexpected. And whenever possible BE the unexpected.”
― Lynda Barry, quote from Cruddy
“Now if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I need to play Russian roulette with our planet’s future with the bullet you’ve so thoughtfully provided. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t see you out.”
― John Scalzi, quote from The Android's Dream
“If you've a notion of what man's heart is, wouldn't you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a civilization is simply man's frantic and frightened attempt to hide himself from himself? That there is a part of man that man wants to reject? That man wants to keep from knowing what he is? That he wants to protect himself from seeing that he is something awful? And that this 'awful' part of himself might not be as awful as he thinks, but he finds it too strange and he does not know what to do with it? We talk about what to do with the atom bomb...But man's heart, his spirit is the deadliest thing in creation. Are not all cultures and civilizations just screens which men have used to divide themselves, to put between that part of themselves which they are afraid of and that part of themselves which they wish, in their deep timidity, to try to preserve? Are not all of man's efforts at order an attempt to still man's fear of himself?”
― Richard Wright, quote from The Outsider
“And we will cause it to be well-made, this Sacrifice. You, young and never loving; I, old and never loved. Such a Song the Sea will never have seen.”
― Diane Duane, quote from Deep Wizardry
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