G. Lawrence > Quotes

“The acquisition of knowledge is never a bad thing; it is only the choices one makes upon that knowledge that may be good or evil.”
― G. Lawrence, The Heretic Heir

“Dissatisfaction is the mother of all unrest. We all want to have enough, to be appreciated within our own spheres, to be seen and heard and to be treated with fairness.”
― G. Lawrence, The Heretic Heir

“Life is easier when one takes a moment to free the mind of thought. My thoughts wanted to destroy me, fulfil a prophesy of my destruction only they could bring true. My mind wanted to think the worst, protecting me for the worst times, yet I knew if I thought that way I surely would fail. I could not become my own worst enemy.”
― G. Lawrence, No More Time to Dance

“To its cousin, Cruelty, Kindness seems weak, slight, thin. Yet it is not. Goodness is not frail, but mighty. Precious for being rarer than evil.”
― G. Lawrence, No More Time to Dance

“How little one ever knows of the path of one’s life…”
― G. Lawrence, The Lady Anne

“One day they are ours, a part of our family, our lives, as vital and colourful as every field and flower, and then one day they are a shadow, flitting at the edge of our vision, inconstant and wavering like a silhouette reflected in a sun-dappled pond in the spring light. Like”
― G. Lawrence, The Bastard Princess

“There are some people with whom the importance of retaining a friendship is dependant upon seeing them every day, feeling their presence and hearing their voice. But true friendships, I believe, come from people who are not able to be always or forever with each other, and although the passage of time may cause them to spread apart for months, or years, when they come back together again, they are able to fall into conversation as though they had only seen each other the day before. In that ease, that acceptance and awareness of minds, therein lays true friendship.”
― G. Lawrence, The Bastard Princess

“Strange are the lessons of life, that so often something teaches a lesson which opposes its own nature, that in weakness I should find strength, and in times of darkness, light.”
― G. Lawrence, Shipwreck

“All you can control is yourself. Once you know that, you are free. Others may think and do what they wish; you will be master of your mind and soul, happy within yourself, controlling your actions and your thoughts. That is all you can control in this world, and it is enough. When you feel sad, think of all you have and how fortunate you are, think how you may make yourself cheerful that day, and do that. When people see you are happy within yourself, they cease to try to bring you down, and they cannot do so in any case because you control your emotions, not them. Rely on no other but yourself, and you will be happier.”
― G. Lawrence, No More Time to Dance

“think that we come to understand that home is as much the people that we love as the bricks that shelter our bodies.”
― G. Lawrence, The Bastard Princess

“we women are the rearguard; those who fight on through time and endure to the end.”
― G. Lawrence, The Heart of the Conqueror

“Shame is an unpleasant emotion because it contains truth.”
― G. Lawrence, The Bastard Princess

“were”
― G. Lawrence, The Most Dangerous Enemy

“So many lessons of life are like this. Humans are such forgetful creatures. We do not simply learn such things and they stay learned.”
― G. Lawrence, Shipwreck

“It was like a magic spell in a fairy story; if he could stop us seeing the worst of his pain, then it was not real. But I suppose we all need the blanket of fiction to make the worst of times manageable.”
― G. Lawrence, The Bastard Princess

“Women can be the best and worst of friends to other women. At worst, they can be spiteful, vicious and cruel, bending your soul into a twist of misery. Not permitted to fight as men do, out in the open and with weapons, they fight with word and thought, striking enemies with cunning, hitting subtly, often without warning. And at their best, women are remarkable; supportive, warm, motherly, sisterly and friendly by turns, people who would throw themselves before death to protect someone they loved. Men will say they do the same in war, but on a battlefield men fight for themselves first. Wars are won by the desperation of men clinging to life. Only the few and courageous fight truly for friends and brothers. But every person on the earth under God has had a woman do it for them. Every mother risks death for her children.”
― G. Lawrence, Shadow of Persephone

“and”
― G. Lawrence, Captive of the King

“Life is not the easy option; it never has been. But we were granted it, and all that we are granted, we must rejoice in. There is so much sweetness in life that we cannot taste unless we also sample the bitter, so much more joy we can contain if we are hollowed out by loss and sadness first. Life is a double-edged sword itself. Two sides to every life… and in order to nibble at the happiness of love, we must also sip from the cup of sorrow.”
― G. Lawrence, The Heretic Heir

“the Pope,” I said. Anne”
― G. Lawrence, Lady Psyche

“Had I had more time to live, perhaps I would have found the truth I find in death, in life; no light without darkness, no darkness without light. No me without either and no them without me. I am light and dark in equal measures. I am not without sin, or virtue. I am not stupid or wise. I am not goddess or whore, not icon or demon. I am nothing they tried to make me, but everything of myself.”
― G. Lawrence, No More Time to Dance

“felt a great respect for a bird who obeyed the master of her own choosing. The saker was no slave. She had no master but the sun. She was wondrously free in a world where all men had many earthly masters. All common men were ruled by nobles, all nobles were ruled by dukes and earls. Even kings were the servants of the Pope. But the saker was not ruled by any man. She chose her master herself, and was ruled only by the sun in the skies.”
― G. Lawrence, La Petite Boulain

“In falling apart, we get to see what we are made of.”
― G. Lawrence, Invincible

“The truth was that the younger generation often attempt to mark themselves from the old, through clothes, words, motions of hand of behaviour. I complained that they had changed, were different to youths when I was young, but they had not. I had changed, for I was no more one of them.”
― G. Lawrence, Old Foxes

“true friendships, I believe, come from people who are not able to be always or forever with each other, and although the passage of time may cause them to spread apart for months, or years, when they come back together again, they are able to fall into conversation as though they had only seen each other the day before. In that ease, that acceptance and awareness of minds, therein lays true friendship.”
― G. Lawrence, The Bastard Princess

“When people leave life, they do not die, not unless we allow them to, not unless we cease speaking of them. In memory we hold them, and there they live.”
― G. Lawrence, The Swan Maiden: Book Two of the Surface and the Deep: Story of Anna of Cleves

“So often we try to exclude sorrow, try not to show it, as though by doing so we dishonour ourselves, as though in showing weakness we are saying we have no strength. But strength is not the absence of weakness. It is just the opposite. Strength is feeling the weakness within and managing to carry on.”
― G. Lawrence, Invincible

“Smell is such a powerful sense; capable of bringing memory to the mind more powerfully than sight or sound. There is nothing that can bring memory swimming into our heads like scent.”
― G. Lawrence, Strands of My Winding Cloth

“like a twig hanging from a bloated tree.”
― G. Lawrence, Captive of the King

“Men so often are allowed to show emotion towards others only at certain times; brothers fallen on the battlefield may be embraced, women may be courted, yet the emotion most men are permitted to show in public is rage, anger. The rest of them they are taught to tie up inside, emotions bound inside their souls and hearts, as though feelings other than anger are balls of wool to roll up and place in a basket out of sight. How we limit women by making them perform roles of perfection, of virtue and meekness, chastity and sweetness, yet how we reduce men too; make them creatures only of anger and action, never contemplation and reflection. They have that inside them, just as women have much too, yet laws, the Church, habits of man and mortal try to make us but one thing, the thing accepted. Aberrations men call monsters, yet this is just lack of understanding. Were our minds wider, we might be more accepting, allowing people to grow into creations more glorious than that which they started life as.”
― G. Lawrence, Shipwreck

“It seems to me that men willing to risk the lives of their families for a chance at power have very little in the way of forethought for what might happen if they fail.   Over-confidence”
― G. Lawrence, The Heretic Heir