Victoria Holt > Quotes

“Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience.”
― Victoria Holt

“I wanted to learn more of love- that is built not on the shifting sands of violent passion but on the steady rock of deep and abiding affection.”
― Victoria Holt, The Shadow of the Lynx

“We are born, we suffer, we love, we die, but the waves continue to beat upon the rocks; the seed time and the harvest come and go, but the earth remains.”
― Victoria Holt, Mistress of Mellyn

“They say that one chooses one’s friends, but one’s relations are thrust upon one.”
― Victoria Holt, India Fan

“Ha! Rollo!”
― Victoria Holt, The Demon Lover

“The more I disliked myself the more wretched I grew. The difference now was that this mood did not manifest itself in sullen silence; I merely made use of my barbed tongue to wound them and spoil their pleasure.”
― Victoria Holt, Menfreya in the Morning

“When one grows older one learns that happiness—complete and unadulterated happiness—comes only in moments, and must be recognized and savored to the full, for even in the happiest life, the complete joy is not always present.”
― Victoria Holt, The Legend of the Seventh Virgin

“Never underestimate yourself, Miss Jessie. People are going to think you’re not up to much if you think that way yourself.”
― Victoria Holt, The Pride of the Peacock

“But somehow at the back of my mind was the feeling that if I did “the sensible thing” I would regret it, for I would be choosing a way of life that would be so predictable, it would rob me of all the excitement that made up the savor of living. If”
― Victoria Holt, India Fan

“You persuade yourself that all is well even though you are feeling bored or unfulfilled and you are not sure if your husband or wife is your Soul mate. You have tried your best and you have created a pretty good life for yourself despite your circumstances. ‘At least you are safe’ your damaged self whispers. ‘At least no one suspects how wounded you are. In fact, I do not even think you are damaged anymore. Look at your nice home, your spouse, your career status, your wealth and all of your nice possessions. You are a success, you fool.”
― Victoria Holt, Heaven is Here - The Ultimate Guide to Living Your Best Life in this World and the Next

“He had all the most charming and irresistible gestures that a girl deeply in love looks for and who refuses to tell herself that they may have been acquired through long practice.”
― Victoria Holt, Menfreya in the Morning

“You always look as though you think people aren't going to like you--that's your trouble.”
― Victoria Holt, Menfreya in the Morning

“It seemed I had briefly stepped into a world where people did wild things and paid for them; but it had made me see that there was more to life than being comfortable and living one day after another, quietly, unadventurously, almost like waiting for death.”
― Victoria Holt, The India Fan

“People don’t always see what their eyes tell them is there. They see what they have made up their minds to see, and I’m afraid they might make up their minds that something done by a woman could not possibly be as good as that done by a man.”
― Victoria Holt, The Demon Lover

“So, Kerensa, you should never regret any experience, good or evil; for there's some good in what's bad just as there be bad in good...”
― Victoria Holt, The Legend of the Seventh Virgin

“How strange is life. Suddenly when one has almost made up one’s mind to a certain action it casually throws an opportunity into one’s path.”
― Victoria Holt, The Secret Woman

“there was more to life than being comfortable and living one day after another, quietly, unadventurously, almost like waiting for death.”
― Victoria Holt, India Fan

“A man condemns himself to failure if he thinks that he won't succeed.”
― Victoria Holt, The Shadow of the Lynx

“It will be a compromise, but that's what the marriage often is”
― Victoria Holt, The Shadow of the Lynx

“Do you know, when I stepped through that gate I felt as though I had walked into a new world...something quite different from anything I had known before. I felt that something tremendously dramatic was happening and because it was all so quiet and in a way ordinary that made it rather sinister.”
― Victoria Holt, The Shadow of the Lynx

“I was excited because getting to know oneself was exciting. I was beginning to believe that I had the power to influence my own personality.”
― Victoria Holt, Menfreya in the Morning

“Never take anything for granted, Miss Jessie. If you do you might lose it. If it’s worth cherishing, cherish it.”
― Victoria Holt, The Pride of the Peacock

“Sometimes I sit at my window looking out on the towers of the Abbas and weep silently. No one must know how I suffered. No one must know how I failed. Sometimes I go and stand in the ring of stones and it seems to me that my fate is more wretched then theirs. They were turned to stone while they were dancing defiance. I wish I could have been.”
― Victoria Holt, The Legend of the Seventh Virgin

“But now the time for dreaming was over. I had to face what was - not what I wished it to be.”
― Victoria Holt, Kirkland Revels

“You've no idea what my home is like. I myself had forgotten during all those years I was away. It's a dark house... and I don't mean that there's just an absence of sunshine... I mean the people in it live dark lives...”
― Victoria Holt, Kirkland Revels

“In spite of my efforts I could not free myself. He caught me to me and I felt his teeth against mine. I kept mine firmly clenched and I hated him. I hated him so fiercely that I found a certain pleasure in my hatred. In that moment he had aroused an emotion in me that I had never felt before. It was not without desire. Perhaps, I thought later when I was alone and trying to analyze my feelings, the desire I felt was for a house, for a different station of life then that into which I had been born, for a fulfillment of a dream. My desire for these things was so fierce that perhaps another kind of desire could be aroused by anyone who could give me them; and his words about marriage had put an idea into my mind.”
― Victoria Holt, The Legend of the Seventh Virgin

“It is no use making excuses. All Pietro said of me was true, I was an interpreter, a performer of gymnastics on the piano. I was not an artist, for artists do not allow other desires and impulses to divert them.”
― Victoria Holt, The Shivering Sands

“We act of our own free will, and if we find life too much to be borne, then clearly there’s no one to blame but ourselves.”
― Victoria Holt, The Pride of the Peacock

“When you experience something like that, the only way to get it out of your mind is to impose images over it. And one day something so wonderful will happen that it will completely obliterate it. That’s life.”
― Victoria Holt, The Secret Woman

“house but I was completely at liberty to walk”
― Victoria Holt, Mistress of Mellyn