Best 25 quotes of Rosemary Sutcliff on MyQuotes

Rosemary Sutcliff

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    And it came to Marcus suddenly that slaves very seldom whistled. They might sing, if they felt like it or if the rhythm helped their work, but whistling was in some way different; it took a free man to make the sort of noise Esca was making.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    And what will they do to you when you have told them this story?' Esca said very simply, 'They will kill me.' 'I am sorry, but I do not think much of that plan.' Marcus said.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    Better to be a laughing-stock than lose the fort for fear of being one.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    But tonight, because Rome had fallen and Felix was dead, because of Valerius’s shame, the empty hut seemed horribly lonely, and there was a small aching need in him for somebody to notice, even if they were not glad, that he had come home.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    I have a special "ah, here I am again, I know exactly what they are going to have for breakfast" feeling when I get back into Roman Britain, which is very nice.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    It may be that the night will close over us in the end, but I believe that morning will come again. Morning always grows out of the darkness, though maybe not for the people who saw the sun go down. We are the Lantern Bearers, my friend; for us to keep something burning, to carry what light we can forward into the darkness and the wind.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    The young Centurion, who had been completely still throughout, said very softly, as though to himself, "Greater love hath no man--" and Justin thought it sounded as though he were quoting someone else.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    When the playful me shows up, I am ready to be a serious learner … a culture of playfulness is closely related to the capacity to learn.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    And out of Tristan's heart there grew a hazel tree, and out of Iseult's a honeysuckle, and they arched together and clung and intertwined so that they could never be separated anymore.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    As I said before, I took to miniature painting without a completely whole heart, on the advice of my elders and betters. Generally speaking, I do not think that one should ever take another person's advice in the things of life that really matter, but follow the dictates of the still small something in one's innermost self. But 'they' advised, and I bowed to the advice; and in this particular instance it was a good thing I did, because the advice turned out to be so resoundingly wrong that it turned me into another direction altogether. If I had gone on working in oils I might very well have been a dedicated but unsuccessful painter to this day.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    As we grow older, we forget how near to the ground we once were. I do not mean merely because our heads were lower down than they are now, though of course that comes into it; but near in the sense of kinship. A small child is aware of the sights and smells and textures of the ground with an acute awareness that we lose in growing up.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    Before he left Rome, Marcus had been in a fair way to becoming a charioteer, in Cradoc's sense of the word, and now desire woke in him, not to possess this team, for he was not one of those who much be able to say "Mine" before they can truly enjoy a thing, but to have them out and harnessed; to feel the vibrating chariot floor under him, and the spread reins quick with life in his hands, and these lovely, fiery little creatures in the traces, his will and theirs at one.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    He loved me and didn't want me hurt. What was worse, he didn't even understand that I had the right to be hurt.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    Here is one with a gift for loving and a gift for hating, and when he hates, God help the man who earns his hatred.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    I simply--don't know," Flavius said, and then suddenly explosive: "I don't know and I don't care! Go to bed.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    My mother was determined that I should be able to walk two miles. If you could walk two miles, she said, you could get to most places you needed to get to. Actually, this is a fallacy. The fact that you can, with great difficulty, and taking an unconscionably time about it, walk two miles, will not get you anywhere you need, or at any rate want, to go. There were times when a wheelchair would have added another dimension to my life, but that was a forbidden subject; and it was not until many, many years later, long after my father and I were alone, that I took the law into my own hands and bought one; and instantly, dazzled with the new freedom that it brought me, swept my father off to his old haunts on an Hellenic cruise.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    My mother was the perfect Spartan mother. I have always been able to imagine her telling her sons to return from battle 'with their shields, or on them'. She did actually try it on my father at the start of the Second World War. He didn't take it kindly, and confided to me ruefully that he thought she rather fancied herself a Hero's Widow.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    Presently I went back to my Companions, and slept under the apple trees, wrapped in my cloak and with my head on Cabal's flank for a pillow. There is no pillow in the world so good as a hound's flank.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    See now, for a good blade, one that will not betray the man in battle, rods of hard and soft iron must be heated and braided together. Then is the blade folded over and hammered flat again, and maybe yet again, many times for the finest blades... So the hard and soft iron are mingled without blending, before the blade is hammered up to its finished form and tempered, and ground to an edge that shall draw blood from the wind. So comes the pattern, like oil and water that mingle but do not mix. Yet it is the strength of the blade, for without the hard iron the blade would bend in battle, and without the soft iron it would break.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    She was wonderful; no mother could have been more wonderful. But ever after, she demanded that I should not forget it, nor cease to be grateful, nor hold an opinion different from her own, nor even, as I grew older, feel the need for any companionship but hers.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    The gilded wreaths and crowns that the Legion had won in the days of its honour were gone from the crimson-bound staff; the furious talons still clutched the crossed thunderbolts, but where the great silver wings should have arched back in savage pride, were only empty socket-holes in the flanks of gilded bronze.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    Tristan held up his arms to the Princess as she came out over the side, and carried her up through the shallows so that when he set her down on the white wave pattered sand, not even the soles of her feet were wet. Now this was the first time that ever they had touched each other, save for the times when the Princess had tended Tristan's wounds, and that was a different kind of touching; and as he set her down, their hands came together, as though they did not want it to be so quickly over. And standing hand in hand, they looked at each other, and for the first time Tristan saw that the Princess's eyes were deeply blue, the colour of wild wood-columbines; and she saw that his were as grey as the restless water out beyond the headland. And they were so close that each saw their own reflection standing in the other one's eyes; and in that moment it was as though something of Iseult entered into Tristan and something of Tristan into Iseult, that could never be called back again for as long as they lived.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    Uncle Acton spent the whole of his working life in India, for the simple reason that he gave up work very young.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    We shall have made such a blaze that men will remember us on the other side or the dark.

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    Rosemary Sutcliff

    Who so pulleth out this sword from this stone and anvil is trueborn King of all Britain.