Top 500 Diana Gabaldon Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 7 of 10

301. “And it was, as Dougal explained, convenient to the pillory, a homely wooden contraption that stood on a small stone plinth in the center of the square, adjacent to the wooden stake used – with thrifty economy of purpose – as whipping post, maypole, flagstaff and horse tether, depending upon requirements.”

— Diana Gabaldon

302. “A mark on one arm like the one I bore. Here, in this time, the mark of sorcery, the mark of a magus. The small, homely scar of a smallpox vaccination.”

— Diana Gabaldon

303. “Hell was full of clocks, he was sure of it. There was no torment, after all, that could not be exacerbated by a contemplation of time passing. The large case clock at the end of the corridor had a particularly penetrating tick-tock, audiable above and through all the noises of the house. It seemed to Lord John Grey to echo his own heartbeats, each one a step on the road towards death.”

— Diana Gabaldon

304. “The dog would run a few steps toward the house, circle once or twice as though unable to decide what to do next, then run back into the wood, turn, and run again toward the house, all the while whining with agitation, tail low and wavering. “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I said. “Bloody Timmy’s in the well!” I.”

— Diana Gabaldon

305. “I prayed all the way up that hill yesterday,” he said softly. “Not for you to stay; I didna think that would be right. I prayed I’d be strong enough to send ye away.” He shook his head, still gazing up the hill, a faraway look in his eyes. “I said ‘Lord, if I’ve never had courage in my life before, let me have it now. Let me be brave enough not to fall on my knees and beg her to stay.’ ” He pulled his eyes away from the cottage and smiled briefly at me. “Hardest thing I ever did, Sassenach.”

— Diana Gabaldon

306. “You can’t make a horse do anything. You see what he’s going to do and then you tell him to do that, and he thinks it’s your idea, so next time you tell him something, he’s more likely to do what you tell him.”

— Diana Gabaldon

307. “Well, the Church does teach that self-abuse is a sin, but my father said he thought that if it came to a choice between abusin’ yourself or some poor woman, a decent man might choose to make the sacrifice.”

— Diana Gabaldon

308. “He was not afraid to die with her, by fire or any other way – only to live without her.”

— Diana Gabaldon

309. “I have a gift for you too,” I said suddenly to Jamie. He turned toward me and his hand slid, large and sure, over the plane of my still-flat stomach.”

— Diana Gabaldon

310. “Probably from Norse roots. There’s a lot of the Norse influence round here, and all the way up the coast to the West. Some of the place names are Norse, you know, not Gaelic at all.”

— Diana Gabaldon

311. “Maybe it was the result of gardening, that quiet sense of pleasure in touching growing things, the satisfaction of helping them thrive.”

— Diana Gabaldon

312. “Even when I’ve just left ye, I want you so much my chest feels tight and my fingers ache with wanting to touch ye again.”

— Diana Gabaldon

313. “And his release began, deep inside me, without his moving, shivering through his body so that his arms trembled, the ruddy hairs quivering in the dim light, and he dropped his head with a sound like a sob, his hair hiding his face as he spilled himself, each jerk and pulse of his flesh between my legs rousing an echo in my own.”

— Diana Gabaldon

314. “And then later, at the funeral, members of the family, followed by the tenants and then the servants, had come one by one to add a stone each to the weight of remembrance.”

— Diana Gabaldon

315. “She sounded as though love were an unfortunate but unavoidable condition.”

— Diana Gabaldon

316. “I prayed all the way up that hill yesterday; not for you to stay; I didna think that would be right. I prayed I’d be strong enough to send ye away. I said, “Lord, if I’ve ever had courage in my life before, let me have it now. Let me be brave enough and not fall to my knees and beg her to stay.”

— Diana Gabaldon

317. “Some people can leave their bodies and travel miles away,” she said, staring meditatively at the page. “Other people see them out wandering, and recognize them, and ye can bloody prove they were really tucked up safe in bed at the time. I’ve seen the records, all the eyewitness testimony. Some people have stigmata ye can see and touch – I’ve seen one. But not everybody. Only certain people.” She.”

— Diana Gabaldon

318. “And so he and Ian – who, it turned out, could also knit and was prostrated by mirth at my lack of knowledge – had taught me the simple basics of knit and purl, explaining, between snorts of derision over my efforts, that in the Highlands all boys were routinely taught to knit, that being a useful occupation well suited to the long idle hours of herding sheep or cattle on the shielings.”

— Diana Gabaldon

319. “Do women hold back the evolution of such things as freedom and other social ideals, out of fear for themselves or their children? Or do they in fact inspire such things – and the risks required to reach them – by providing the things worth fighting for? Not merely fighting to defend, either, but to propel forward, for a man wanted more for his children than he would ever have.”

— Diana Gabaldon

320. “Why not? I wanted to say. Because you didn’t know her, she was nothing to you. Because you were already hurt. Because it takes something rather special in the way of guts to stand up in front of a crowd and let someone hit you in the face, no matter what your motive.”

— Diana Gabaldon

321. “Escorted by Murtagh, who was disguised as my groom, I had barely made it out of sight of the prison before sliding off my horse and being sick in the snow.”

— Diana Gabaldon

322. “He said, ‘If you’re sizable, half the men ye meet will fear ye, and the other half will want to try ye. Knock one down,’ he said, ‘and the rest will let ye be. But learn to do it fast and clean, or you’ll be fightin’ all your life.’ So he’d take me to the barn and knock me into the straw until I learned to hit back.”

— Diana Gabaldon

323. “What a mystery blood was – how did a tiny gesture, a tome of voice, endure through generations like the harder verities of flesh? He had seen it again and again, watching his nieces and nephews grow, and accepted without thought the ehoes of parent and grandparent that appeared for brief moments. the shadow of a face looking back through the years – that vanished again into the face that was now.”

— Diana Gabaldon

324. “You are a rather remarkable woman,” he said at last, in a level tone. “Indeed,” I said, not looking up. “In what way?” He leaned back; I heard the rustle of his bedding. “You are neither circumspect nor circuitous. In fact, I don’t believe I have ever met anyone more devastatingly straightforward – male or female.” “Well, it’s not by choice,” I said. I came to the end of the thread and tucked it neatly into the ball. “I was born that way.” “So was I,” he said, very softly.”

— Diana Gabaldon

325. “What is it about ye, Sassenach, I wonder?” he said conversationally, eyes still fixed on Myers. “What is what about me?” He turned then, and gave me a narrow eye. “What it is that makes every man ye meet want to take off his breeks within five minutes of meetin’ ye.”

— Diana Gabaldon

326. “I understood very well just then, why it is that men measure time. They wish to fix a moment, in the vain hope that doing so will keep it from departing.”

— Diana Gabaldon

327. “Your aunt’s a handsome woman, Fraser, but she could freeze the ballocks off the King o’ Japan, and she wanted to.”

— Diana Gabaldon

328. “That Cherry Bounce must be good stuff.”

— Diana Gabaldon

329. “I’ll leave it to you, Sassenach,” he said dryly, “to imagine what it feels like to arrive unexpectedly in the midst of a brothel, in possession of a verra large sausage.”

— Diana Gabaldon

330. “But the years between now and then had been hard ones – and compassion was a soft emotion, easily eroded by circumstance.”

— Diana Gabaldon

331. “I’m not sure that religion was constructed with time travelers in mind.” Buck’s brows rose at that. “Constructed?” he echoed, surprised. “Who builds God?”

— Diana Gabaldon

332. “I glanced upward once, to see Brianna glowing, still smiling from ear to ear. Jamie was behind her, also smiling, his cheeks wet with tears. He said something to her in husky Gaelic, and brushing the hair away from her neck, leaned forward and kissed her gently, just behind the ear.”

— Diana Gabaldon

333. “Does he – is he one who knows what he is, do you think?” Claire’s hands stilled, the clanking pestle falling silent. “Oh, yes,” she said. “He knows.” “A laird? Is that what you’d call it?” Her mother hesitated, thinking. “No,” she said at last. She took up the pestle and began to grind again. The fragrance of dried marjoram filled the room like incense. “He’s a man,” she said, “and that’s no small thing to be.”

— Diana Gabaldon

334. “He came toward us, looking worried. As the birth grew closer, we had both been edgy; Frank irritable and myself terrified, having no idea what might happen between us, with the appearance of Jamie Fraser’s child. But when the nurse had taken Brianna from her bassinet and handed her to Frank, with the words “Here’s Daddy’s little girl,” his face had grown blank, and then – looking down at the tiny face, perfect as a rosebud – gone soft with wonder. Within a week, he had been hers, body and soul.”

— Diana Gabaldon

335. “In that case, maybe we shouldn’t be disturbing you,” said a soft American voice. “Oh, I forgot,” said Claire, half-turning to the girl who had stood out of sight in the corner of the porch. “Roger Wakefield – my daughter, Brianna.”

— Diana Gabaldon

336. “He went on loving her,” she whispered, as much to herself as to anyone else. “He didn’t forget her.” “Of course he didna forget her.” She opened her eyes to see Ian’s long face and kind brown eyes six inches away. A broad work-worn hand rested on hers, warm and hard, a hand even larger than her own. “Neither did we,” he said.”

— Diana Gabaldon

337. “An unaccustomed weed of jealousy sprang up in Jamie’s heart, stinging like nettles. He stamped firmly on it; he was fortunate indeed to know that his son enjoyed a loving relationship with his stepfather. There, that was the weed stamped out. The stamping, though, seemed to have left a small bruised spot on his heart; he could feel it when he breathed.”

— Diana Gabaldon

338. “Intimacy and romance are not synonymous.”

— Diana Gabaldon

339. “But then, I didn’t think I’d tell them you were here.” “What makes you think they don’t know?” I asked, beginning to feel rather hollow, despite my earlier resolve to brazen it out. I cast a quick glance at the window, but.”

— Diana Gabaldon

340. “He shook his head, absorbed in one of his feats of memory, those brief periods of scholastic rapture where he lost touch with the world around him, absorbed completely in conjuring up knowledge from all its sources.”

— Diana Gabaldon

341. “My God, he thought, I’m going to die before I’ve been born.”

— Diana Gabaldon

342. “A man should pay tribute to your body,” he said softly... “For you are beautiful, and that is your right.”

— Diana Gabaldon

343. “It wasn’t a very.”

— Diana Gabaldon

344. “I felt at once horribly vulnerable and yet completely safe.”

— Diana Gabaldon

345. “Marketing with a small baby was more like a ninety-minute expedition into Darkest Borneo, requiring massive amounts of equipment and tremendous expenditures of energy.”

— Diana Gabaldon

346. “I listen,” she said simply. “To what folk say – and what they don’t.”

— Diana Gabaldon

347. “Cows?” he asked, “Was it really cows, or was I dreaming?”

— Diana Gabaldon

348. “The pressure of events was increasing, day by day, and he could feel responsibility wrapped like a strangling vine about his spinal cord, reaching eager fingers into the base of his skull.”

— Diana Gabaldon

349. “It is for this reason that a scientist constructs hypotheses – suggestions for the cause of an observation. But a hypothesis must never be confused with an explanation – with proof.”

— Diana Gabaldon

350. “The small, homely scar of a smallpox vaccination. Rain.”

— Diana Gabaldon