"Did I behave myself tonight, Ross?’ she asked. ‘Did I behave as Mrs Poldark should behave?’‘You misbehaved monstrously,’ he said, ‘and were a triumph."
- Winston Graham
"The most frightening blazing anger was alive in her now. It was not only Elizabeth that she could have killed but Ross. She could have thrown every piece of crockery at him, and knives and forks too. ..."
"Do you believe we are masters of ourselves, or merely dance like puppets on strings having the illusion of independence?"
"Yet, although he could not quite work this out in simple terms in his own mind, the very savour of life, he thought, was itself enhanced if it were not totally taken for granted. Perhaps it was someth..."
"He wondered if the real world was that one in which men fought for policies and principles and died or lived gloriously - or more often miserably - for the sake of an abstract word like patriotism or ..."
"Yes, it was a "beautiful" sermon, tugging the emotions and conjuring up pictures of greatness and peace. But were they talking about the decent peppery ordinary old man he knew, or had the subject str..."
"It isn't very pretty to have been made a fool of by one's own feelings,' he said. 'To take childish promises and build a--a castle out of them..."
"But was any future, anyone's future, unfraught by hazards of some sort? The only security was death. So long as one wanted to go on living on had to accept the risks. Well, she accepted them..."
"Men's tongues in some things outrun women's."