Source: Song lyrics, The Sensual World (1989)
“I've killed priests before, and another priest sold me an indulgence for the killings, so don't think I fear you or your Church. There's no sin that can't be bought off, no pardon that can't be purchased.”
Sir William Douglas, to Bernard de Taillebourg of the Inquisition, p. 17
The Grail Quest, Vagabond (2002)
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Bernard Cornwell 175
British writer 1944Related quotes
[L]e philosophe n'a jamais tué de prêtres et le prêtre a tué beaucoup de philosophes...
Observations on the Drawing Up of Laws (1774)
Source: Political Writings
Shouted out at the end of a televised public humiliation in the People's Stadium of Shanghai, during the "Cultural Revolution" (20 June 1968), as quoted in Pioneers of Modern China : Understanding the Inscrutable Chinese (2005) by Khoon Choy Lee
“You are a fool, sir priest. Ignorance may excuse you. It will certainly kill you.”
Source: Ars Magica (1989), Chapter 2 (p. 18)
Source: Structures (or, Why Things Don't Fall Down) (1978), Chapter 15, A Chapter of accidents
Context: In the course of a long professional life spent, or misspent, in the study of the strengths of materials and structures, I have had cause to examine a lot of accidents, many of them fatal. I have been forced to the conclusion that very few accidents just "happen" in a morally neutral way. Nine out of ten accidents are caused, not by more or less abstruse technical effects, but by old-fashioned human sin — often verging on plain wickedness. Of course I do not mean the more gilded and juicy sins like deliberate murder, large-scale fraud, or Sex. It is squalid sins like carelessness, idleness, won't-learn-and-don't-need-to-ask, you-can't-tell-me-anything-about-my-job, pride, jealousy and greed that kill people.
Interview with Joe Hagan appearing in Vanity Fair, October 2020