Rafael Sabatini Quotes

Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them, the better I feel. Two miles is great; two thousand miles is beautiful.

He gazes through sunlight's buttresses, back down the refectory at the others, wallowing in their plenitude of bananas, thick palatals of their hunger lost somewhere in the stretch of morning between them and himself. A hundred miles of it, so suddenly. Solitude, even among the meshes of this war, can when it wishes so take him by the blind gut and touch, as now, possessively. Pirate's again some other side of a window, watching strangers eat breakfast.

There's no such thing as a crowded battlefield. Battlefields are lonely places.

The dominant feeling of the battlefield is loneliness.

Acting alone is probably to condemn oneself to isolation and probably … warfare.

Judging from the experience of the European War, imperialism renders no great benefit to any nation, whereas liberty for all nationalities is the only principle by which humanity will ever be saved.

The problem is to find the time to write. That's why I go to sea. I couldn't be happier than when at sea.

I just want to be left alone.

I learned to build bookshelves and brought books to my room, gathering them around me thickly. I read by day and into the night. I thought about perfectibility, and deism, and adjectives, and clouds, and the foxes, I locked my door, from the inside, and leaped from the roof and went to the woods, by day or darkness.

The birds looked upon me as nothing but a man, quite a trifling creature without wings-and they would have nothing to do with me. Were it not so I would build a small cabin for myself among their crowd of nests and pass my days counting the sea waves.

In the middle of an ocean on board a ship, one can get a sense of vastness.

I would be at home reading, because I felt so disconnected from humanity.

Outside of society, if you're looking that's where you'll find me.

Make love, not war. Unless you’re Loki, in which case: do what you want.

How many roads must a man walk down, Before you call him a man? How many seas must a white dove sail, Before she sleeps in the sand? Yes, and how many times must the cannon balls fly, Before they're forever banned?

Well, I know about loneliness. I won't talk about it, but I was very lonely after the war. I know what it feels like to spend a whole weekend all by yourself and no one wants you at all.

I saw above a sea of hills A solitary planet shine, And there was no one, near or far, to keep the world from being mine.

There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear - the city of London and the South Seas.

Being a soldier [in the wars of modern power politics] was like being on a team in a sport that drew no crowds, except for the players' own parents and friends.

We were always getting away with something, which implied that someone was always watching us, which meant that we were not alone in this world.

If you will not have it thus: if in the pride of power, if in contempt of reason and reliance upon force, you say we shall not go, but shall remain as subjects to you, then, gentlemen of the North, a war is to be inaugurated the like of which men have not seen.

She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.

This new war, like the previous one, would be a test of the power of machines against people and places; whatever its causes and justifications, it would make the world worse. This was true of that new war, and it has been true of every new war since... I knew too that this new war was not even new but was only the old one come again. And what caused it? It was caused, I thought, by people failing to love one another, failing to love their enemies.

I believe in the kindness of strangers. And when I'm at war with myself I ride, I just ride.

I am alone in this white, garden-rimmed street. Alone and free. But this freedom is rather like death.