21 Quotes by M.M. Kaye

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer: let him step to the music that he hears.

Nor have I become so blind that I cannot see what is written on your face, or so deaf that I cannot hear what is in your voice; and I am not yet so old that I cannot remember my own youth.

I cannot see anything admirable in stupidity, injustice and sheer incompetence in high places, and there is too much of all three in the present administration.

Perhaps I myself am a pompous and conceited old fool. And perhaps if these fools I complain of were French or Dutch or German I would not mind so much, because then I could say ‘What else can you expect?’ and feel superior. It is because they are men of my own race that I would have them all good.

What could be more entrancing than a carefree nomadic existence camping, moving, exploring strange places and the ruins of forgotten empires, sleeping under canvas or the open sky, and giving no thought to the conventions and restriction of the modern world?

In the absence of any concrete evidence. I plump for Leonard Stock as the murderer. First, because he’s the most unlikely person, and as anyone who has ever read a murder story knows, it’s always the most unlikely person who turns out to have done the deed – and fifty thousand authors can’t be wrong.

He means, Coppy, that even though he had no intention of getting engaged or married, or otherwise entangled, he has discovered – probably with disgust – that the light of Reason has been put out and that he has been forced, against every prompting of intelligence, common sense and will-power, to chuck himself and his future at your feet, because he knows that unless you can be persuaded to pick them up, neither the one or the other will ever be of any value to him again.

Did you ever read Aurora Leigh? – “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his shoes.

Have you really become so much an Angrezi that you believe your people have only to say “It is forbidden”, for such old customs as this to cease immediately? Bah!