Quotes by Mary Balogh

I do believe in fate, Anne-not the blind fate that gives one no freedom of choice, but a fate that sets down a pattern for each of our lives and gives us choices, numerous choices, by which to find that pattern and be happy.

She had never believed in fate. She still did not. It would be nonsense of freedom of will and choice, and it was through such freedom that we worked our way through life and learned what we needed to learn. But sometimes, it seemed to her, there was something, some sign, to nudge one along in a certain direction. What one chose to do with that nudge was up to that person.

We are made up of everything we have ever been, Percy. It is the joy and the pain of our individuality. There are no two of us the same.

It is stronge how smells can bring back vivid memories.

Was he a pleasant man hiding behind a mask of seeming carelessness or an unpleasant man hiding behind a mask of charm & smiles? Or like most humans, was he a dizzying mix of contradictory charactersticks?

I can be hurt, she said, only by people I respect.

And he knew at that moment that love world never die, that it would never fade away altogether. The time might come when he would meet and marry someone else. He might even be reasonably happy. But there would always be a deep precious place in his heart that belonged to his first real love.

Nothing is permanently perfect. But there are perfect moments and the will to choose what will bring about more perfect moments.

Now I must live with the consequences of the choice I made. And I will not call it the wrong choice. That would be foolish and pointless. That choice led me to everything that has happened since, including this very moment, and the choices I make today or tomorrow or next week will lead me to the next and next present moments in my life. It is all a journey, Miss Jewell. I have come to understand that that is what life is all about-a journey and the courage and energy always to take the next step and the next without judgement about what was right and what was wrong.

She bit her lower lip hard and blinked her eyes. There was such wistfulness and longing in his voice. Oh, she was going to give him back his eyes, or the next best thing, if it took her the rest of her life to do it.

There had to be a reason why they were not going to marry. They had both been so adamant about it.What the devil was the reason?

She had made reason and common sense her gods. She had allowed people who did not know what she knew or understand what she unstood to be her mentors.

And she was terribly aware that she was alive. Not just living and breathing, but ...alive.

Suddenly, and for the first time, he was at the center of his own life, living it and loving it.

He had always felt that he lived on the edges of life, Constantine realized, watching everyone else living, sometimes helping them do it.

He thought the library door would never open again, but that he would be left to live out the rest of his life rooted to the spot on the library carpet, afraid to move a muscle lest the house fall upon his shoulders. He deliberately shrugged them and shuffled his feel just to prove to himself that it could be done.

I do not admire greatness that has no substance.

It is foolish to regret anything form ones past.

One longs and longs to be grown up, doesnt one?, she said, I dreamed of being eighteen and having a Season and meeting handsome gentlemen even apart from Dominic and falling in love with them and marrying him and living happily ever after. But life is not nearly as that simple when one finally does grow up.

Tears never were worth the effort of crying them.