Quotes from The Disorderly Knights

Dorothy Dunnett ·  503 pages

Rating: (3.1K votes)


“I would give you my soul in a blackberry pie; and a knife to cut it with.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“Man is a being of varied, manifold and inconstant nature. And woman, by God, is a match for him.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“Jerott, for God’s sake! Are you doing this for a wager?’ said Lymond, his patience gone at last. ‘What does anyone want out of life? What kind of freak do you suppose I am? I miss books and good verse and decent talk. I miss women, to speak to, not to rape; and children, and men creating things instead of destroying them. And from the time I wake until the time I find I can’t go to sleep there is the void—the bloody void where there was no music today and none yesterday and no prospect of any tomorrow, or tomorrow, or next God-damned year.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“Today,’ said Lymond, ‘if you must know, I don’t like living at all. But that’s just immaturity boggling at the sad face of failure. Tomorrow I’ll be bright as a bedbug again.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“And the English army, wheeling, started south at a gallop over the hill pass into Ettrick, followed by twenty men and eight hundred sheep in steel helmets.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights



“So small a spirit, to lodge such sorrows as mankind has brought you. Live … live.… Wait for me, new, frightened soul. And though the world should reel to a puny death, and the wolves are appointed our godfathers, I will not fail you, ever.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“What’s wrong? Has Francis been rude? Then you must try to overlook it. I know you wouldn’t think so, but he is thoroughly upset by Tom Erskine’s death; and when Francis is troubled he doesn’t show it, he just goes and makes life wretched for somebody.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“Depose him,’ said Will Scott, astonished.

‘The Grand Master’s holy office terminates with his life.’

‘And can nobody think of an answer to that?’ said Will Scott.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“Philippa Somerville, standing back a little, did not withdraw her arm. In her white face, a shadow of motherly irritation appeared. ‘Has no one here any sense? Be quiet and sit down. The world will look after itself for a night, without your hand on the rim.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“He regards boredom, I observe, as the One and Mighty Enemy of his soul. And will succeed in conquering it, I am sure—if he survives the experience.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights



“I’ve wed his two empty boots.’ ‘That you havena,’ said Janet, Lady of Buccleuch, lowering her voice not at all in the presence of two hundred twittering Scott relations as they gazed after their vanishing husbands. ‘They aye remember their boots. It’s their empty nightgowns that get fair monotonous.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“And if there’s no trouble, you’ll make it,’ offered Will Scott, his eyes bright, his cheeks red. ‘No. At the moment,’ affirmed Lymond grimly, ‘I am having truck with nothing less than total calamity.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“Lymond said quietly, ‘You had good reason to hate me. I always understood that. I don’t know why you should think differently now, but take care. Don’t build up another false image. I may be the picturesque sufferer now, but when I have the whip-hold, I shall behave quite as crudely, or worse. I have no pretty faults. Only, sometimes, a purpose.’ He paused, and said, ‘Est conformis precedenti. I owe the Somervilles rather a lot already.’ Philippa’s unwinking brown gaze flickered shiftily at the Latin and then steadied.

'I should have told you before. You don’t mind?’

‘If you had told me before, you might not have decided to have me for a friend. I don’t mind,’ said Francis Crawford and told, for once, the bare truth.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“A Scott, having got his bride pregnant, was apt to file her as completed business for eight months at a time.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“Once, long ago, Francis Crawford had reduced her to terror and, the episode over, she had suffered to find that for Kate, apparently, no reason suggested itself against making that same Francis Crawford her friend. He was not Philippa’s friend. She had made that clear, and, to be fair, he had respected it. He had even, when you thought of it, curtailed his visits to Kate, although Kate’s studied lack of comment on this served only to make Philippa angrier. He had been nasty at Boghall. He had hit her at Liddel Keep. He had stopped her going anywhere for weeks. He had saved her life. That was indisputable. He had been effective over poor Trotty Luckup, while she had been pretty rude, and he hadn’t forced himself on her; and he had made her warm with his cloak. He had gone to Liddel Keep expressly to warn her, and when she had been pig-headed about leaving (Kate was right) he had done the only thing possible to make her. And then he had come to Flaw Valleys for nothing but to make sure of her safety, and he had been so tired that Kate had cried after he had gone. And then it had suddenly struck her, firmly and deeply in her shamefully flat chest, so that her heart thumped and her eyes filled with tears, that maybe she was wrong. Put together everything you knew of Francis Crawford. Put together what you had heard at Boghall and at Midculter, what you had seen at Flaw Valleys, and it all added up to one enormous, soul-crushing entity. She had been wrong. She did not understand him; she had never met anyone like him; she was only beginning to glimpse what Kate, poor maligned Kate, must have seen all these years under the talk. But the fact remained that he had gone out of his way to protect her, and she had put his life in jeopardy in return.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights



“Lymond said softly, ‘That is the only thing you may not say to me. . . . Kate, superb Kate: I will not be mothered.’

‘Mothered!’ Kate’s small, undistinguished face was black with annoyance. ‘I would sooner mother a vampire. I am merely trying to point out what your browbeaten theorists at St Mary’s ought surely to have mentioned in passing. Health is a weapon of war. Unless you obtain adequate rest, first your judgement will go, and then every other qualification you may have to command, and either way, the forces of light will have a field-day in the end.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“My dear, my dear,’ said Kate, but to herself. ‘I would give you my soul in a blackberry pie; and a knife to cut it with.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“Philippa Somerville was annoyed. To her friends the Nixons, who owned Liddel Keep, and with whom Kate had deposited her for one night, she had given an accurate description of Sir William Scott of Kincurd, his height, his skill, his status, and his general suitability as an escort for Philippa Somerville from Liddesdale to Midculter Castle. And the said William Scott had not turned up. She fumed all the morning of that fine first day of May, and by afternoon was driven to revealing her general dissatisfaction with Scotland, the boring nature of Joleta, her extreme dislike of one of the Crawfords and the variable and unreliable nature of the said William Scott. She agreed that the Dowager Lady Culter was adorable, and Mariotta nice, and that she liked the baby.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“Two mornings later, entering her daughter’s room, Kate was struck by the flatness of the bed, and then by the sight of a folded paper laid dead centre of the untenanted pillow. Unfolded, it proved to be a witty and delightfully-written apology from her daughter for upsetting the household, coupled with the information that, having some business of vital importance to transact north of the Border in the immediate future, she had taken the liberty of leaving for a few days without permission, as she just knew that Kate would make a fuss and stop her. She would be back directly with some heather, and Kate was not to worry and not to speak to any strange men. She had, Philippa concluded, taken Cheese-wame Henderson with her: thus becoming the only known fugitive to persuade her bodyguard to run away, too. It was a typical Somerville letter, and in other circumstances Kate no doubt would have been charmed by the spelling alone. As it was, she roused the neighbourhood for ten miles around, and there was no able-bodied Englishman within reach of Flaw Valleys who slept in his own bed that night or the next.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“The war between England and Scotland was in its eighth year and there had been no raid for ten days: it had seemed possible to get married in peace.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights



“Lion-hearted; her tremors braced with virtue, Philippa trotted on.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“No, Mr Crawford!’ cried Philippa forbiddingly, and ducking under the snatching arms that tried to prevent her, she ran forward. ‘No! What harm can Sir Graham do now? What might the little boy become?’ And sinking on her knees, she shook, in her vehemence, Lymond’s bloodstained arm. ‘You castigate the Kerrs and the Scotts and the others, but what is this but useless vengeance? He can do us no harm; he can do Scotland no harm; he can do Malta no harm. There is a baby!’ said Philippa, very loudly and insistently and desperately, as if Lymond could not hear her, or were too tired or too simple to understand. ‘There is a baby. You can’t abandon your son!”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“And at thirty-eight a brilliant exponent of arms and a knight of the great fighting and religious Order of St John, the Chevalier de Villegagnon had absolutely no use for common sense himself, but respected it in the laity.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“I hope the string and clapper arrangement he calls a mind has been permanently put out of action.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“Only common mortals like the Somervilles have good old rotten hates, dear,’ said her mother. ‘Sir Graham manages to love everybody and wouldn’t know what you’re talking about. Have a bun.’

‘He doesn’t love the Turks,’ said Philippa. ‘He kills them.’

‘That isn’t hate,’ said Kate Somerville. ‘That’s simply hoeing among one’s principles to keep them healthy and neat. I’m sure he would tell you he bears them no personal grudge; and they think they’re going to Paradise anyway, so it does everyone good.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights



“Though whether the mass murder of strangers for one’s principles ranks higher in virtue than attacking one’s neighbours for the hell of it is a point I’m glad I don’t have to settle.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“It won’t be long,’ said Philippa cheerfully, her mother’s ring in her voice. ‘You know what Bess says. There’s nothing in this world a drop of aqua-vitæ in a sheep’s bladder won’t cure. Stop the Somervilles with a knife! It needs artillery.’ And she blew her nose hard.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“To save our friends’ nerves, I suggest we meet on a plane of brutal courtesy. It need not interfere with our mutual distrust.”
-Francis Crawford of Lymond”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“Moving forward quietly to Jerott’s side, Adam Blacklock had heard. ‘Don’t you understand? The authorities are afraid of them both,’ he said gently. ‘Why do you supose this cordon is here, which only an unarmed girl was allowed to pass through? Lymond, loyal to Scotland, might be a threat to French power greater than even Gabriel, one of these days—Philippa!’ And a wordless shout, like a cry at a cockfight, rose among the stone pillars and sank muffled into the old, dusty banners above the choir roof. For Philippa Somerville, who believed in action when words were not enough, had leaned over and snatched the knife from Lymond’s left hand.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights


“What does anyone want out of life? What kind of freak do you suppose I am? I miss books and good verse and decent talk. I miss women, to speak to, not to rape; and children, and men creating things instead of destroying them. And from the time I wake until the time I find I can’t go to sleep there is the void—the bloody void where there was no music today and none yesterday and no prospect of any tomorrow, or tomorrow, or next God-damned year.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights



About the author

Dorothy Dunnett
Born place: in Dunfermline, Scotland, The United Kingdom
Born date August 25, 1923
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Het meisje struikelde verbaasd opzij en sprong toen langs hen als een lichtvoetig hert. Ze had een wijde geborduurde bloes aan en een lange rok die dichtgeknopt was in de taille en een split had tot halverwege haar dij. Haar fonkelende, smaragdgroene ogen pasten precies bij de jaden ketting die om haar nek stuiterde... Toen ze de grot uit waren geklommen, keek Marika Jake even recht aan. Het zonlicht flitste als smaragdgroen vuur uit haar ogen, die een mengeling van nieuwsgierigheid en plezier lieten zien.”
― James Rollins, quote from Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow


“Your tongue was in my mouth.”
Breathless, I jerked my head. “So it was.”
“It licked me.”
“You licked back.”
“It seemed rude not to.”
“Well....”
― Penelope Fletcher, quote from Venomous


“С такива върхове на пръстите жената като че ли прекрачваше обсега на обикновено човешкото. Или може би преследваше самата женственост? Раковина, огряна от багрите в нея, окъпано в роса венчелистче – хрумваха ми най-очевидните сравнения. Но същевременно не се сещах са никаква раковина, за никакво венчелистче, чийто цвят да прилича на тях. Бяха ноктите върху пръстите на момичето, несравними с нищо друго на света. По-бистри и по-прозрачни от най-тънката и фина раковина, и от най-деликатното листенце, те като че ли съдържаха роса на трагедия. Всеки ден и всяка нощ цялата ѝ енергия отиваше да шлифова тази трагична женска красота. Тази красота проникна в моята самота. И вероятно самотата ми покапа по ноктите на момичето и ги превърна в капчици трагедия.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories


“The mind which is created quick to love, is responsive to everything that is pleasing, soon as by pleasure it is awakened into activity. Your apprehensive faculty draws an impression from a real object, and unfolds it within you, so that it makes the mind turn thereto. And if, being turned, it inclines towards it, that inclination is love; that is nature, which through pleasure is bound anew within you.”
― Dante Alighieri, quote from Dante's Divine Comedy Set: Three-Volume Set


“we are waiting and waiting and doing nothing, until it is too late, and they commit crimes so serious that all society wants to do is punish instead of rehabilitate.”
― Edward Humes, quote from No Matter How Loud I Shout: A Year in the Life of Juvenile Court


Interesting books

Running with the Demon
(24.1K)
Running with the Dem...
by Terry Brooks
Soulstice
(2.9K)
Soulstice
by Simon Holt
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
(28.5K)
The Fabric of the Co...
by Brian Greene
Crown of Crystal Flame
(6.5K)
Crown of Crystal Fla...
by C.L. Wilson
Close to Famous
(8.2K)
Close to Famous
by Joan Bauer
The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse
(7.1K)
The Hollow Chocolate...
by Robert Rankin

About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.