Susanna Kearsley > Quotes

“The past can teach us, nurture us, but it cannot sustain us. The essence of life is change, and we must move ever forward or the soul will wither and die.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Mariana

“But life, if nothing else, had taught her promises weren't always to be counted on, and what appeared at first a shining chance might end in bitter disappointment.”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Winter Sea

“Whatever time we have," he said, "it will be time enough.”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Rose Garden

“..the fields might fall to fallow and the birds might stop their song awhile; the growing things might die and lie in silence under snow, while through it all the cold sea wore its face of storms and death and sunken hopes...and yet unseen beneath the waves a warmer current ran that, in its time, would bring the spring.”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Winter Sea

“So, you see, my heart is held forever by this place," she said. "I cannot leave.”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Winter Sea

“Men who watch, and say little, very often are much wiser than the men they serve.”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Winter Sea

“Ever try to hold a butterfly? It can't be done. You damage them," he said. 'As gentle as you try to be, you take the powder from their wings and they won't ever fly the same. It's kinder to let them go.”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Rose Garden

“Tis never the place, but the people one shares it with who are the cause of our happiest memories.”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Rose Garden

“There's a line in The Barretts of Wimpole Street - you know, the play - where Elizabeth Barrett is trying to work out the meaning of one of Robert Browning's poems, and she shows it to him, and he reads it and he tells her when he wrote that poem, only God and Robert Browning knew what it meant, and now only God knows. And that's how I feel about studying English. Who knows what the writer was thinking, and why should it matter? I'd rather just read for enjoyment.”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Winter Sea

“I believe there are no random meetings in our lives – that everyone we touch, who touches us, has been put in our path for a reason. The briefest encounter can open a door, or heal a wound, or close a circle that was started long before your birth.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Every Secret Thing

“Ye'll never best your fears until ye face them”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Winter Sea

“Knowing that the battle will not end the way he wishes does not make it any less worthwhile the fight.”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Rose Garden

“Life is always uncertain,'he said with a shrug. 'We cannot let the fear of what might happen stop us living as we choose.”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Rose Garden

“It's too easy, you see, to get trapped in the past. The past is very seductive. People always talk about the mists of time, you know, but really it's the present that's in a mist, uncertain. The past is quite clear, and warm, and comforting. That's why people often get stuck there.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Mariana

“Ye'll learn more of a man if ye look at his face when he's looking at somebody else, than ye'll learn any other way, but,' he advised her, 'ye have to keep silent to do it”
― Susanna Kearsley (Author), The Firebird

“These are your beautiful days, Julia Beckett," he promised softly.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Mariana

“I do promise that you will survive this. Faith, my own heart is so scattered round the country now, I marvel that it has the strength each day to keep me standing. But it does,' she said, and drawing in a steady breath she pulled back just enough to raise a hand to wipe Sophia's tears. 'It does. And so will yours.'
'How can you be so sure?'
'Because it is a heart, and knows no better.”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Winter Sea

“Tis action moves the world....[in] the game of chess, mind that: ye cannot leave your men to stand unmoving on the board and hope to win. A soldier must first step upon the battlefield if does mean to cross it.”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Winter Sea

“Hope rarely enters into it. 'Tis action moves the world.”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Winter Sea

“When I meet a wind I cannot fight , I can do naught but set my sails to let it take me where it will.”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Rose Garden

“Try looking with your soul, instead. The soul sees what truly matters.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Mariana

“Hiding the person you are,' he said, 'won't make you happy. I never hide who I am. What I am.”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Firebird

“The strongest soldier cannot balance long upon the blade that does divide his honor and his heart, and whatever way he falls, the cut will kill him.”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Firebird

“But what you bring back with you in the end, he said, might not be what you started out in search of to begin with”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Firebird

“...a man with eyes the color of the winter sea.”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Winter Sea

“The world becomes a wider place, with but a little learning.”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Firebird

“d'you think I'd let a little thing like the grave come between us?

-Richard”
― Susanna Kearsley, Mariana

“Better to find out certain things by living them, not by reading them in a book.”
― Susanna Kearsley, Mariana

“I love to read, but all through school I hated it when books were pulled apart and analyzed. Winnie-the-pooh as a political allegory, that sort of thing. It never really worked for me. There's a line in The Barretts of Wimpole Street - you know, the play - where Elizabeth Barrett is trying to work out the meaning of one of Robert Browning's poems, and she shows it to him, and he reads it and he tells her that when he wrote that poem, only God and Robert Browning knew what it meant and now only God knows. And that's how I feel about studying English. Who knows what the writer was thinking, and why should it matter? I'd rather just read for enjoyment."

'The Winter Sea”
― Susanna Kearsley

“But it is by our actions, surely, and not by our words, that we reveal our worth.”
― Susanna Kearsley (Author)