Top 500 Diana Gabaldon Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “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

302. “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

303. “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

304. “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

305. “Aye, lass, courage like that is uncommon rare. It wasna ignorance, mind; he’d just seen two men flogged and he knew the same was coming to him. It’s just he had made up his mind there was no help for it. Boldness in battle is nothing out of the way for a Scotsman, ye ken, but to face down fear in cold blood is rare in any man.”

— Diana Gabaldon

306. “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

307. “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

308. “There is an oath upon her,” he said to Arch, and I realized dimly that he was still speaking in Gaelic, though I understood him clearly. “She may not kill, save it is for mercy or her life. It is myself who kills for her.” “And I,” said a tall figure behind him, softly. Ian. Arch.”

— Diana Gabaldon

309. “It may,” the deeper voice agreed. “It may rain straight up tomorrow instead of down, as well. That doesna mean I’ll stand waiting at the stairhead wi’ my wee bucket turned upside down.”

— Diana Gabaldon

310. “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

311. “If ye were no longer there – or somewhere – ” he said very softly, “then the sun would no longer come up or go down.” He lifted my hand and kissed it, very gently. He laid it, closed around my ring, upon my chest, rose, and left.”

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

313. “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

314. “No wonder men got impervious to superficial pain, I thought. It came from this habit of hammering each other incessantly.”

— Diana Gabaldon

315. “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

316. “I am what God has made me, and must deal with the Times in which He has placed me.”

— Diana Gabaldon

317. “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

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

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

320. “I always thought it would be a simple matter to lie wi’ a woman, he said softly. And yet... I want to fall on my face at your feet and worship you”-he dropped the towel and reached out, taking me by the shoulders-“and still I want to force ye to your knees before me, and hold ye there wi’ me hands tangled in your hair, and your mouth at my service... and I want both things at the same time, Sassenach.”

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

322. “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

323. “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

324. “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

325. “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

326. “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

327. “With that height, plus a face of an ugliness so transcendant as to be grotesquely beautiful, it was obvious why she had embraced a religious life – Christ was the only man from whom she might expect embrace in return.”

— Diana Gabaldon

328. “Hal swore in German behind him. He must have reached the part about the rifles; German oaths were reserved for the most stringent occasions, French being used for minor things like a burnt dinner, and Latin for formal insults committed to paper. Minnie wouldn’t let either Hal or John swear in English in the house, not wanting the boys to acquire low habits. John could have told her it was too late for such caution but didn’t.”

— Diana Gabaldon

329. “Boldness in battle is nothing out of the way... but to face down fear in cold blood is rare in any man.”

— Diana Gabaldon

330. “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

331. “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

332. “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

333. “When I asked my da how ye knew which was the right woman, he told me when the time came, I’d have no doubt. And I didn’t. When I woke in the dark under that tree on the road to Leoch, with you sitting on my chest, cursing me for bleeding to death, I said to myself ‘Jamie Fraser, for all ye canna see what she looks like, and for all she weights as much as a good draft horse, this is the woman.”

— Diana Gabaldon

334. “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

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

— Diana Gabaldon

336. “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

337. “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

338. “Until we two be burned to ashes.”

— Diana Gabaldon

339. “He was right, of course. Bloody man, he was almost always right.”

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

341. “Ye must always give money for a new blade,” he explained, half smiling. “So it kens ye for its owner, and willna turn on ye.”

— Diana Gabaldon

342. “It wasn’t a very.”

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

344. “Damn ye, woman! Will ye never do as you’re told?” “Probably not,” I said meekly.”

— Diana Gabaldon

345. “It was what you did when someone died; turned toward God and at least acknowledge the fact.”

— Diana Gabaldon

346. “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

347. “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

348. “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

349. “For a moment, I saw him as he had looked the morning I married him. Duine uasal was what he looked, a man of worth. But the bold face above the lace was the same, older now, but wiser with it – yet the tilt of his shining head and the set of the wide, firm mouth, the slanted clear cat-eyes that looked into my own, were just the same. Here was a man who had always known his worth.”

— Diana Gabaldon

350. “Money is a good bridle, but a weak rein.”

— Diana Gabaldon