Top 50 Edward Rutherfurd Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Paris. City of love. City of dreams. City of splendor. City of saints and scholars. City of gaiety. Sink of iniquity.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

2. “She was quiet for a moment or two. Then she said: Cruel words are a terrible thing, Quash. Sometimes you regret them. But what’s been said cannot be unsaid.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

3. “All empires become arrogant. It is their nature.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

4. “You can do what you like, sir, but I’ll tell you this. New York is the true capital of America. Every New Yorker knows it, and by God, we always shall.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

5. “When a voyager begins a journey, he prepares his ship, decides upon his course and sets sail. What else can he do? But he cannot know the outcome – what storms may arise, what new lands he may find, or whether or not he will return. That is destiny, and you must accept it. Never think you can escape destiny.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

6. “The bare, sweeping chalk downs of southern England, familiar today, are not a natural feature of the landscape: they were created by prehistoric man.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

7. “This Plantagenet king comes from the devil.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

8. “Imagine. Freedom. Always.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

9. “The old man had smiled kindly. “It is in their nature, child. God has made woman the weaker vessel.” It was an old belief, dating back to St Paul himself. “It is man who is made in God’s image, my child. Man’s seed produces his perfect likeness. Woman, being only the container in which the seed matures, is therefore inferior. She may still reach heaven, but, being inferior, it is harder.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

10. “It was evident that Madame Restell not only liked to do as she pleased, but to talk about it as well.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

11. “If I had my life again, I’d act differently. It’s hard for a man if he thinks his wife doesn’t respect him.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

12. “For the French army was going to war. In taxis.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

13. “So how would you define a Londoner, then?” Lady Penny asked curiously. “Someone who lives here. It’s like the old definition of a cockney: someone who’s born within hearing distance of Bow bells. And a foreigner,” he added with a grin, “is anyone, Anglo-Saxon or not, who lives outside.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

14. “All of my career has been an attempt to educate myself and get paid for it.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

15. “We have all been robbed of the land we have loved for a thousand years. Do you not see that, Welshman? Can you not imagine his rage? We were not even conquered. We were deceived.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

16. “These are graven images – idolatry. A sin.” He knew it was true. This was a love of worldly beauty utterly at odds with all he knew to be Puritan and holy.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

17. “I think you should weep, now. It’s time.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

18. “And he glanced down at Mercy beside him, and saw in her face such radiant goodness, such a calm certainty, that it seemed to him that if he could only be with her all his life, he should know a love, and happiness, and peace that he had never known before.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

19. “King Charles I of England believed in the compromise worked out under Queen Elizabeth – that the Church of Rome had fallen into evil ways, that the English Church was purified Catholicism, and that it was the Anglican bishops, nowadays, who were the true inheritors of the apostles.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

20. “Slowly the silent bird turned its head. It could do so, if it chose, through more than three hundred and sixty degrees.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

21. “And in busy London there now grew up one of the greatest gifts that the English genius was to leave the world. For in the reign of Elizabeth I began the first and greatest flowering of the glorious English theatre.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

22. “Unfortunately he’s just sold all his stock. We gave him the funds today.” “Sold everything?” “I tried to persuade him not to, but he came in on Monday and said he’d decided not to tempt fate.” The clerk smiled. “Said he’d had a sign from St. Anthony.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

23. “The English Church, it was claimed, was Catholicism purified and reformed. And what was the nature of this reform? The truth was that nobody, least of all Henry himself, had much idea.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

24. “The whole area, manor house, Clink, all eighteen brothels and the handsome profits therefrom, belonged to and was ruled by the bishop.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

25. “A New Yorker can never be beat, Gorham, because he gets right back up again. Remember that.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

26. “Love might come suddenly, unsought, from a place not looked for, and stay for a while before departing into the distance, to a place where it cannot be reached.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

27. “La enemistad perdura. La amistad es menos segura. Sobre todo en esos tiempos.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

28. “The fault in his son lay not in his nature, which was honorable, but in his perceptions, which were limited.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

29. “That was the trouble with being too highly born, Finbarr considered. The gods paid too much attention to you. It was ever thus in the Celtic world. Ravens would fly over the house to announce the death of a clan chief, swans would desert the lake. A king’s bad judgement could affect the weather. And if you were a prince, the druids made prophesies about you from before the day you were born; and after that, there was no escape.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

30. “But, she smiled, it seems to me he has a warm heart.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

31. “You believe it?” “A man should always believe his wife, sir.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

32. “We, the heirs of Saint Patrick, we who kept alive the Christian faith and the writings of ancient Rome when most of the world had sunk under the barbarians, we who gave the Saxons their education are to be taught a lesson in Christianity by the English?”

— Edward Rutherfurd

33. “And Dirk van Dyck the Dutchman realized that he never had been, and never would be, as proud of any child as he was of his elegant little Indian daughter at that moment.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

34. “And whether they were saintly or corrupt, scholars or scarcely able to get through the Lord’s Prayer in Latin, all society’s educated men had the Church to thank for their learning.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

35. “Small wounds are healed by time, but time can only bandage great wounds, which continue to bleed in secret.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

36. “Don’t rule your husband. But arrange the conditions in which he will make his choices.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

37. “England’s Protestant,” they declared. “Why else did we throw out the Stuarts? The government and their placemen are selling us down the river. If they’ll give way over Catholics, what will they give way over next?”

— Edward Rutherfurd

38. “What has he done?” he asked. The young man himself began to respond, but the youths cut him off. “He started the Fire of London, sir,” they cried. Even the day before, the rumours had begun. A fire like this could not be the work of chance. Some said it must be the Dutch. But most – perhaps half the good people of London – had a sounder suspicion by far. “It’s the Catholics,” they said. “Who else would do such a thing?”

— Edward Rutherfurd

39. “They say that people should be free to do as they like. That’s what I think. But if they start preaching at me, they can go to hell.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

40. “Novelists liked to imagine the interconnectedness of things – as though all the people in the big city were part of some great organism, their lives intertwined. He.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

41. “Doesn’t private vice make a man unworthy of public office?” And now kindly Mrs. Albion looked at Mercy with genuine astonishment. “Well,” she laughed, “if it did, there’d be no one to govern the land.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

42. “They say that we’re all made by our previous lives. Our affinities for each other were made in the deep past, and when we meet people who become important in our lives, it may seem like a chance accident – no more significant than the flapping of a butterfly’s wing – but in fact a hidden force is drawing us together across the surface of the stream of life. Yuanfen, they call it.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

43. “The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

44. “It’s always a good rule in life to be as honest with people as you can, but never tell them where the money is.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

45. “It’s strange how people can preach brotherly love one day and tear you to bits the next.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

46. “Whatever you do, keep your family together. That’s the most important thing in the world.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

47. “Why do I always have to want more?” he asked the river. And receiving no reply, he shook his head.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

48. “We are measured not only by our triumphs, young man, but by our persistence. If we fail, we must try harder.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

49. “You never know in life. Sometimes people can mean what they say.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

50. “And to learn, he must be curious and also humble. For a proud man never learns anything.”

— Edward Rutherfurd