Best 18 quotes of C. J. Sansom on MyQuotes

But if we never acted except when we were certain our motives were pure, we would never act at all.

Dominion is a spy novel, a love story, and also I hope gives some sense of the difficulties faced by dissidents under any totalitarian regime: the threat of imprisonment, torture and death; the threat to one's family, the terror of being alone in a hostile world.

Funny, when i was a little boy I wanted to be good. But I could never seem to manage it somehow. And if you're not good, the good people will throw you to the wolves. So you might as well just be bad

Have you ever thought what a God would be like who actually ordained and executed the cruelty that is in [the biblical Book of Revelation]? A holocaust of mankind. Yet so many of these Bible-men accept the idea without a second thought.

In worshipping their nationhood men worship themselves and scorn others, and that is no healthy thing.

It seems a universal rule in this world that people will always look for victims and scapegoats, does it not? Especially at times of difficulty and tension.

Like all lawyers, I was delighted by gratitude. It happened so rarely.

The echoes of childhood torments have great power, even when not brought to mind in such an inexplicable and horrifying way.

The lives God gives to us, the awful things we can’t escape from. Sometimes I think that sort of God would enjoy making hell for us after we die.

Truly, as the ancients taught us, there is nothing under the moon, however fine, that is not subject to corruption.

However much one lacks piety, the atmosphere in a graveyard encourages quiet reflection.

How men fear the chaos of the world, I thought, and the yawning eternity hereafter. So we build patterns to explain its terrible mysteries and reassure ourselves we are safe in this world and beyond.

Huoneesta kuuluva Piersin ääni oli hiljainen mutta veitsenterävä. (C. J. Sansom: Ilmestys, suom. Ilkka Rekiaro)

If a ruler who wants to act honourably is surrounded by unscrupulous men, his downfall is inevitable.

Many [Tudor-era religious radicals] believed then, exactly as Christian fundamentalists do today, that they lived in the 'last days' before Armageddon and, again just as now, saw signs all around in the world that they took as certain proof that the Apocalypse was imminent. Again like fundamentalists today, they looked on the prospect of the violent destruction of mankind without turning a hair. The remarkable similarity between the first Tudor Puritans and the fanatics among today's Christian fundamentalists extends to their selective reading of the Bible, their emphasis on the Book of Revelation, their certainty of their rightness, even to their phraseology. Where the Book of Revelation is concerned, I share the view of Guy, that the early church fathers released something very dangerous on the world when, after much deliberation, they decided to include it in the Christian canon." [From the author's concluding Historical Note]

Six wives the King's had now.' Barak's words dragged me from my reverie. 'We can't even get one between us.

... there is nothing under the moon, however fine, that is not subject to corruption.

We of alien looks or words must stick together.