Rafael Sabatini Quotes

An intelligent observation of the facts of human existence will reveal to shallow-minded folk who sneer at the use of coincidence in the arts of fiction and drama that life itself is little more than a series of coincidences.

In endeavor itself there is a certain dynamic entertainment, affording an illusion of useful purpose. With achievement the illusion is dispelled. Man's greatest accomplishment is to produce change. The only good in life is study, because study is an endeavor that never reaches fulfillment. It busies a man to the end of his days, and it aims at the only true reality in all this world of shams and deceits.

Regret of neglected opportunity is the worst hell that a living soul can inhabit.

Thirstily he set it to his lips, and as its cool refreshment began to soothe his throat, he thanked Heaven that in a world of much evil there was still so good a thing as ale.

The idea of equality is a by-product of the sentiment of envy. Since it must always prove beyond human ower to raise the inferior mass to a superior stratum, apostles of equality must ever be inferiors seeking to reduce their betters to their level. It follows that a nation that once admits this doctrine of equality will be dragged by it to the level, moral, intelletual and political, of its most worthless class.

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

Truth is so often disconcerting.

Only he who is without anything is without enemies.

Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

A man must sometimes laugh at himself or go mad,’ said he. ‘Few realize it. That is why there are so many madmen in the world.

When all is said, a man's final judgment of his fellows must be based upon his knowledge of himself

To do what you imply would require nothing short of divine intervention. You must change man, not systems.

There remained the sea, which is free to all, and particularly alluring to those who feel themselves at war with humanity.

Gold has at all times been considered the best of testimonies of good faith.

In life we pay for the evil that in life we do.

I am very poor - for a know nothing, understand nothing. It is not a calamitous condition until it is realized.

...it is human nature, I suppose, to be futile and ridiculous.

He was suffering from the loss of an illusion.

The love that is never to be realized will often remain a man's guiding ideal.

Do you expect sincerity in man when hypocrisy is the very keynote of human nature? We are nurtured on it; we are schooled in it, we live by it; and we rarely realize it.’ – Book 3, Chapter 16

Open the history of the past at whatsoever page you will and there you shall find coincidence at work bringing about events that the merest chance might have averted. Indeed, coincidence may be defined as the tool used by Fate to shape the destinies of men and nations.

It came to Mr. Blood, as he trudged forward under the laden apple-trees on that fragrant, delicious July morning, that man—as he had long suspected—was the vilest work of God, and that only a fool would set himself up as a healer of a species that was best exterminated.

They opposed brute force to reason and philosophy, and battalions of foreign mercenaries to ideas. As if ideas were to be impaled on bayonets!

But I like my madness. There is a thrill in it unknown to such sanity as yours. ~ Book 1, Chapter 9.

But they were fated to misunderstand each other.