Top 93 Quotes & Sayings by Ken Follett - Page 2

We’re all good when it suits us, he used to say: that doesn’t count. It’s when you want so badly to do something wrong—when you’re about to make a fortune from a dishonest deal, or kiss the lovely lips of your neighbor’s wife, or tell a lie to get yourself out of terrible trouble—that’s when you need the rules. Your integrity is like a sword, he would say: you shouldn’t wave it until you’re about to put it to the test.

He had been granted his life's wish-but conditionally.

I’ve worked with volunteers before,” he began. “It’s important not to… not to treat them like servants. We may feel that they are laboring to obtain a heavenly reward, and should therefore work harder than they would for money; but they don’t necessarily take that attitude. They feel they’re working for nothing, and doing a great kindness to us thereby; and if we seem ungrateful they will work slowly and make mistakes. It will be best to rule them with a light touch.

When I'm writing a woman character, I don't think, 'What would a woman do?' I just think, 'What would this character do in this situation?

The CIA's research program is described in a book called "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate."

President Wilson says a leader must treat public opinion the way a sailor deals with the wind, using it to blow the ship in one direction or another, but never trying to go directly against it.

When you're thinking, please remember this: excessive pride is a familiar sin, but a man may just as easily frustrate the will of God through excessive humility.

But the lesson of Abraham's story is that God demands the best we have to offer, that which is most precious to us.

You never know," Jack said speculatively. "There may come a time when savages like William Hamleigh aren't in power; when the laws protect the ordinary people instead of enslaving them; when the king makes peace instead of war. Think of that - a time when towns in England don't need walls!

What she needs,' Tom said aloud 'is a husband.' Agnes said crisply, 'Well, she can't have mine.

It was an odd thing to do, to stand in a street in the hope of seeing someone who hardly knew him, but he did not want to move.

I am very fond of Edith Wharton. She's quite high brow but also a great storyteller. My favorite is 'The House of Mirth.' I also like 'The Reef.

She looked at his young face, so full of concern and tenderness; and she remembered why she had run away from everyone else and sought solitude here. She yearned to kiss him, and she saw the answering longing in his eyes. Every fiber of her body told her to throw herself into his arms, but she knew what she had to do. She wanted to say, I love you like a thunderstorm, like a lion, like a helpless rage; but instead she said: "I think I'm going to marry Alfred.

Hunger is the best seasoning.

You see, all that I ever held dear has been taken from me," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. "And when you've lost everything-" Her facade began to crumble, and her voice broke, but she made herself carry on. "When you've lost everything, you've got nothing to lose.

The most expensive part of building is the mistakes.

Nevertheless, the book gave Jack a feeling he had never had before, that the past was like a story, in which one thing led to another, and the world was not a boundless mystery, but a finite thing that could be comprehended.

A baby was like a revolution, Grigori thought: you could start one, but you could not control how it would turn out.

She wanted to say 'I love you like a thunderstorm, like a lion, like a helpless rage'.

Ethel said: "Lloyd, there's someone here you may remember-" Daisy could not restrain herself. She ran to Lloyd and threw herself into his arms. She hugged him. She looked into his green eyes, then kissed his brown cheeks and his broken nose and then his mouth. "I love you, Lloyd," she sad madly. "I love you, I love you, I love you." "I love you, too, Daisy," he said. Behind her, Daisy heard Ethel's wry voice. "You do remember, I see.

Man who betrayed you once would betray you twice.

I imagined it. I wrote it. But I guess I never thought I'd see it.

Why was it, Lloyd wondered, that the people who wanted to destroy everything good about their country were the quickest to wave the national flag?

Why did people manufacture trouble when there was already so much of it in the world?

It was an odd relationship, but then she was an extraordinary woman: a prioress who doubted much of what the church taught; an acclaimed healer who rejected medicine as practised by physicians; and a nun who made enthusiastic love to her man whenever she could get away with it. If I wanted a normal relationship, Merthin told himself, I should have picked a normal girl.

Everybody takes what they life from the teachings of the church, and ignores the parts that don't suit them.

Jack Reacher is a brilliant movie

I could fall for you in a heartbeat

His aim was the glory of God, but the glory of Philip pleased him too.

In both cases, weakness and scruples had defeated strength and ruthlessness.

It was the most romantic plane ever made.

What news? There's nothing to tell. I'm a nun.

The boundary between philosophy and fiction is not as clear cut as you may think and the two definitely interact.