45 Quotes by Rosemary Sutcliff

...extraordinarily beautiful, and slightly out of focus.

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.

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

And the joy flashed in Lancelot's ugly face like a bright blade drawn from a battered sheath.

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

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.

Always, in these times, I am wretched save when sleep comes to me. Therefore, I have come to look upon sleep as the best of all gifts.” - Helen, about the war

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.

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.