Lindsey Davis > Quotes

“Never lend if you need repayment; never give where you want a return.”
― Lindsey Davis, The Course of Honor

“Sometimes you run away by yourself purely so someone who cares will come to find you. Half the time nobody does. That's the tragedy of life.”
― Lindsey Davis, The Ides of April

“I despise women who rely on men entirely for their own existence.”
― Lindsey Davis, Enemies at Home

“You could tell those two had been married by the way that she ignored him.”
― Lindsey Davis, Shadows in Bronze

“The plumber plodded along in silence, like a man who has learned to be polite to lunatics through dealing with civil engineers.”
― Lindsey Davis, Shadows in Bronze

“I like my women in a few wisps of drapery: then I can hope for a chance to remove the wisps. If they start out with nothing I tend to get depressed because either they have just stripped off for someone else or, in my line of work, they are usually dead.”
― Lindsey Davis, The Silver Pigs

“In my experience, men who sit in corners are the ones to watch.”
― Lindsey Davis, The Silver Pigs

“Some men are born lucky. Others are born Marcus Didius Falco.”
― Lindsey Davis, The Silver Pigs

“Emperors may come and go, bringing more or less chaos, but the bureaucrats keep the wheels turning.”
― Lindsey Davis, The Third Nero

“It struck me there might be a reason why Helena Justina whipped along at such a cracking pace: she did not want to be stuck in the wilderness with my corpse. I thanked Jove for her ruthless good sense. I did not want my corpse to be stuck with her in any case.”
― Lindsey Davis, The Silver Pigs

“Have any sheep been seen walking out of the Library with seagoing adventurers clinging to their wool?”
― Lindsey Davis, Alexandria

“He listened with the mild demeanour of a man who had waited eight years for his town council to draw up a specification for emergency repairs.”
― Lindsey Davis, Shadows in Bronze

“Dictators love to talk. It is remarkable how men who wield excessive sole power will be consistent in this: Given a captive audience, they all drone on for hours. And hours. The human brain can only concentrate for twenty minutes, ask any teacher. Dictators have rarely been despatched on a training course to learn that simple fact. Many dictators are completely untrained; tyranny comes to them naturally.”
― Lindsey Davis, Invitation to Die: A Novella of Ancient Rome

“I had been right in the first place. Getting involved with politicians is complete stupidity.”
― Lindsey Davis, Venus in Copper

“But, remember, a tyrant hates to admit he is one,’ Faustus said quietly. ‘The worse he is, the more he claims – and even believes – that traditional religion and democracy matter to him deeply and determine all his actions.”
― Lindsey Davis, Deadly Election

“popular men who laugh at your jokes pose a threat which blatant villains can never command.”
― Lindsey Davis, Shadows in Bronze

“The grander the temple, the lousier its hangers-on.”
― Lindsey Davis, The Ides of April

“She called me a rat.’ ‘Oh yes, I gathered you two were very close!”
― Lindsey Davis, Shadows in Bronze

“Free time, time to do whatever you liked, or to do absolutely nothing, alone or in company you valued: of all the luxuries in the Empire, perhaps this was the greatest.”
― Lindsey Davis, The Graveyard of the Hesperides

“They were not beggars; well, not in the usual sense. They were Christians, who wanted not just my nephew's money but their souls.”
― Lindsey Davis, See Delphi and Die

“Afterwards, sometimes she dared to remember being in his arms. How, after only clumsy couplings with others, she and this man had straightaway come together as a perfect fit. How they moved together, in effortless synchronicity and with such deep pleasure. How when their exercise left them exhausted, she cried a little, so Vinius wiped her eye with his index finger, murmuring kindly, 'No tears!' before they both fell into profound sleep.
How her troubled mind had drowned in peace, her body melting against his...

He was dead. No point speculating. Cherish the past for what it was, an ideal, a signal that human happiness might be a possibility. Raise your standards. Make a decent life, Lucilla. Life is all there is. If it's only once, it must be good... He had been right. If perfection only happened once, that was better than never. Now nothing for her would ever again entail complete despair. So thank you, Gaius Vinius Clodianus, son of Marcus, thank you for your good deed, a deed that brightened somebody's dark world.”
― Lindsey Davis, Master and God

“Even the impetuous Helena Justina was an advocate of traditional family councils. However, every Roman matron knows that domestic councils were devised by our foremothers purely so the views of the matron of a household may prevail.”
― Lindsey Davis, The Jupiter Myth

“We managed to make a good night of it, in the desperate way people do when the choice is between dogged survival or sliding under the morass.”
― Lindsey Davis, Shadows in Bronze

“I would rather see Rome ruled by a man who once had to ask his accountant tricky questions before his steward could pay the butcher’s bill than by some mad limb like Nero, who was brought up believing himself the son and the grandson of gods, and who thought wearing the purple gave him free rein to indulge his personal vanities, execute real talent, bankrupt the Treasury, burn half of Rome – and bore the living daylights out of paying customers in theatres!”
― Lindsey Davis, Shadows in Bronze

“No woman who builds a career on hard work and talent will ever compliment a much younger one who uses the shallow gift of her looks.”
― Lindsey Davis, The Third Nero

“Hello, still waiting for an unexpected development? There was none. It happens. It happens all the time.”
― Lindsey Davis, Two for the Lions

“We marched him to the turfy shack where he lived with his parents and while the youth sulked Petronius Longus put the whole moral issue in succinct terms to them: Ollia’s father was a legionary veteran who had served in Egypt and Syria for over twenty years until he left with double pay, three medals, and a diploma that made Ollia legitimate; he now ran a boxers’ training school where he was famous for his high-minded attitude and his fighters were notorious for their loyalty to him… The old fisherman was a toothless, hapless, faithless cove you would not trust too near you with a filleting knife, but whether from fear or simple cunning he co-operated eagerly. The lad agreed to marry the girl and since Silvia would never abandon Ollia here, we decided that the fisherboy had to come back with us to Rome. His relations looked impressed by this result. We accepted it as the best we could achieve.”
― Lindsey Davis, Shadows in Bronze

“There was one good side to my male relations. Since they were married to my sisters, they had all learned to be swiftly subdued by sarcasm.”
― Lindsey Davis, Time to Depart

“I like my women in a few wisps of drapery: then I can hope for a chance to remove the wisps.”
― Lindsey Davis, The Silver Pigs

“All bankers assume your money is theirs to play with.”
― Lindsey Davis, The Third Nero