Evie Dunmore > Quotes

“Perhaps you can explain it to me, then,” she said, “how is it fair that my utterly inept cousin is in command of me, for no reason other than that he’s a man and I’m a woman? How is it fair that I master Latin and Greek as well as any man at Oxford, yet I am taught over a baker’s shop? How is it fair that a man can tell me my brain was wired wrong, when his main achievement in life seems to be his birth into a life of privilege? And why do I have to beg a man to please make it his interest that I, too, may vote on the laws that govern my life every day?”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“Perhaps this is not a question of staying out of trouble, Your Grace. Perhaps this is about deciding on which side of history you want to be.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“Darling," he said, "I have only begun to love you.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“favorite quote by Mary Wollstonecraft: I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves.”
― Evie Dunmore, A Rogue of One's Own

“Tell me,” he said, “how frustrating is it to be surrounded by people considered your betters when they don’t hold a candle to your abilities?”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“Hattie pursed her lips. “Personally, I always found a thousand ships a little excessive. And Menelaus and Paris fought over Helen like dogs over a bone; no one asked her what she wanted. Even her obsession with Paris was compelled by a poisoned arrow—what’s romantic about that?”
“Passion,” Annabelle said, “Eros’s arrows are infused with passion.”
“Oh, passion, poison,” Hattie said, “either makes people addle-brained.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“She looked away. "I'm well now."

She wasn't; she was suffering from severe stubbornness.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“Now she knew why girls were not allowed to feel anger—there was a reckless hope in it, and power.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“Well, sitting prettily certainly doesn't seem to make a difference at all. If it did, why do we still turn into property the day a man puts his ring on our finger? I say let us try making noise for a change.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“A bittersweet pull made his chest contract. He supposed that was how it felt to miss someone.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“The world of men is a brutal place. And yet women visit our offices, approach us in the streets, and send us petitions with tens of thousands more signatures every year to ask for more freedom. They feel their safety comes at the expense of their freedom. And, gentlemen, the trouble with freedom is it isn't just an empty phrase that serves well in a speech. The desire to be free is an instinct deeply ingrained in every living thing. Trap any wild animal, and it will bite off its own paw to be free again. Capture a man, and breaking free will become his sole mission. Te only way to dissuade a creature from striving for its freedom is to break it ... I, for my part, am not prepared to break half the population of Britain. I am, in fact, unprepared to see single woman harmed because of her desire for some liberty.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“Tristan, Lord Ballentine. Scoundrel, seducer, bane of her youth.”
― Evie Dunmore, A Rogue of One's Own

“That was why they called it temptation—it never presented itself as something ugly, or tepid, or harmless; no, it came in the guise of glorious feelings and a sense of utter rightness, even when it was wrong. That was why one needed principles. Regrettable, that her grasp on them was so shaky when it counted.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“I’m afraid the idea that a woman is a person, whether married or not, is so inherently radical no matter which way I present it I shall be considered a nuisance.”
― Evie Dunmore, A Rogue of One's Own

“There it was, the fire she had sensed behind the ice, smoldering at a thousand degrees hotter than leaping flames. Oh, they had it wrong, the people who called him cool and aloof. He was a man who did not do things by halves, and he knew. So he leashed himself. Untether him, and he would burn as hotly as he was cold, and the dark force of her own passion would crash against his like a wave against a rock rather than pull him under.
He is my match.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“I understand how being pleasant can keep the peace, but how will it win a war?”
― Evie Dunmore, A Rogue of One's Own

“Because, my lord, if the marchioness believes that the female brain is incapable of forming a sound analysis on political issues, why should anyone trust her analysis on women in politics?”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“Much that I despise," he said hoarsely. "and all that I desire, meets in you. And it frustrates me beyond reason.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“Bewildering. If it was truly in woman's nature to be an ever demure and pleasant sunbeam in the gloom, why then, it took an awful lot of ink and instructions to keep reminding woman of this nature of hers..”
― Evie Dunmore, A Rogue of One's Own

“For if a woman was a person in her own right, one could conclude she was also in possession of a mind and a heart of her own, and thus had needs of her own.”
― Evie Dunmore, A Rogue of One's Own

“The possibilities may be endless, but the mind is limited. People hardly ever contemplate options outside of what they know.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“It would be unwise to keep talking. So naturally, she did keep talking.”
― Evie Dunmore, A Rogue of One's Own

“But her features were arranged exactly how some primal aesthetic blueprint in his head envisioned beauty. It made her look oddly familiar, as if he had long known her and now she had walked back into his life. Impossible, that.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“I want to roll up on a bed and read a romantic novel and not think.”
― Evie Dunmore, The Gentleman's Gambit

“If we were of equal station,” he said softly, “I would have proposed to you when we took our walk in the maze.” Oh. The magnitude of this was too enormous to sink in, with her standing on a doorstep, about to walk away. She felt strangely suspended in time, her breathing turned shaky. “I wish you would not have told me this.” Because she could never, ever be anyone other than plain Miss Annabelle Archer, and now she’d forever know how dearly that had cost her.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“[...] she couldn't help but think that this was how Persephone would be dragged to the underworld in 1880s London: not screaming, not twisting wildly, but painfully composed while Hades wore a velvet jacket.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“At first sight, they were still an unlikely match—opposites in looks, upbringing, and temperament. But on the artist's color wheel, two opposite colors were considered complementary. Their high contrast caused high impact, and they looked their brightest when placed next to each other.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves.”
― Evie Dunmore, A Rogue of One's Own

“shall now forever live with the knowledge that without you in it, the world would be a strange place, and I should never be at home in it again.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“If I were the only person in the world,” she said to the ceiling, “how would I even know I was a woman? Who would tell me? Who would make me? I would just be me. Why can’t I just be me?” The earl was quiet for a moment. “An interesting hypothesis,” he then allowed. “But no one is ever just themselves.”
― Evie Dunmore, The Gentleman's Gambit