Quotes by Mary Balogh

I prefer to believe the opposite - that there is always an indestructible beauty at the heart of darkness.

The ugliness at the heart of beauty. Is there always ugliness, do you suppose? Even when the object is very, very beautiful?

Why did people assume that the beautiful among them needed nothing but their beauty to bring them happiness? That behind the beauty there was nothing but an empty shell, insensitive shell?

This boy, he said, indicating the paintings with one sweep of his arms, was romantic. He thought that it was beauty that bound everything together. And for him it was true. Life had been beautiful for him. He was very young. He knew very little of life. He saw beauty but he did not feel any true passion. How could he? He did not know. He had not really encountered the force of beautys opposite.Are you more cynical now, then? she asked him.Cynical, he frowned, No, not that. I know that there is an ugly side of life-and not just human life. I know that everything is not simply beautiful. I am not a romantic as this boy was. But I am not a cynic either. There is something enduring in all of life, Anne, something tough. Something. Something terribly weak yet incredibly powerful...

Why had peace given place so soon to turmoil? To two separate solitudes? Because peace had been without thought? Without...integrity?How could she have felt like that without love?Was love essential?Did it even exist - the love she had dreamed of her life?If it did, it was too late now for her to find it.Must she make do with this instead, then?Only this?Pleasure without love?

Falling in love was as much about receiving as it was giving, was it? It seemed selfish. It was not, though. It was the opposite. Keeping oneself from being loved was to refuse the ultimate gift. He had thought himself done with romantic love. He had thought himself an incurable cynic. He was not, though.He was only someone whose heart and mind, and very soul, had been battered and bruised. It was still - and always - safe to give since there was a certain deal of control to be exerted over giving. Taking, or allowing oneself to receive, was an altogether more risky business. For receiving meant opening up the heart again.Perhaps to rejection.Or disillusionment.Or pain.Or even heart break.It was all terribly risky.And all terribly necessary.And of course, there was the whole issue of trust...

The bad part is life continues. The good part is that the pain goes away.

Life, she realized, so often became a determined, relentless avoidance of pain-of ones own, of other peoples. But sometimes pain had to be acknowledged and even touched so that one could move into it and through it and past it. Or else be destroyed by it.

One who has conquered every aspect of his pain except the deepest.

Future indifferences is no consolation for present pain.

But marriage is forever.Oh, not really, he assured her. Only until one of us dies.Her eyes widened. I do not want you to die, she said.Perhaps you will go first, he said, though I rather think I hope not. I would probably have grown accustomed to you by then and would miss you.

But marriage is forever.Oh, not really, he assured her. Only until one of us dies.Her eyes widened. I do not want you to die, she said.Perhaps you will go first, he said, though I rather think I hope not. I would probably have grown accustomed to you by then and would miss you.

His friend laughed. You missed your calling, Freddie, he said. You should have been one of the aforementioned clergy. Is this what marriage does to you? One shudders at the very idea.

You are not by any manner of means the sort of woman I am in search of as a wife, and I am in a totally different universe from the husband you hope to find. But I feel a powerful urge to kiss you, for all that.

But it is only people who have plenty of money who can despise it. To the rest of us it is important. It can at least put food in our stomachs clothes on our backs, and it can at least feed our dreams.

All is artifice in my world, Constantine. Even me. Especially me. He taught me to be a duchess, to be an impregnable fortress, to be the guardian of my own heart, But he admitted that he could not teach me how or when to allow the fortress to be breached or my heart to be unlocked. It would simply happen, he said. he promised it would, in fact. But how is love to find me, even assuming it is looking?

People do understand the language of the heart, you know, even if the head does not always comprehend it.

Families are wonderful institution, he said. I value mine more than I can possibly say. But each of us has an individual life to live, our own path to tread, our own destiny to forge. You can imagine, if you will, how my family wished to shelter and protect me and do my living for me so that I would never again know fear or pain or abandonment. Eventually I had to step clear of them-or I might have fallen into the temptation of allowing them to do just that.

But that is what life is all about, he said. It is about dreaming and making those dreams come true with effort and determination - and love.

But why always think the worst of people? What would she be doing to herself if she adopted that attitude to life? It was better to think the best and be wrong than to think the worst and be wrong.