Margaret George > Quotes

“So I learned two things that night, and the next day, from him: the perfection of a moment, and the fleeting nature of it.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“It is almost impossible to describe happiness, because at the time it feels entirely natural, as if all the rest of your life has been the aberration; only in retrospect does it swim into focus as the rare and precious thing it is. When it is present, it seems to be eternal, abiding forever, and there is no need to examine it or clutch it. Later, when it has evaporated, you stare in dismay at your empty palm, where only a little of the perfume lingers to prove that once it was there, and now is flown.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“The cure for a broken heart is simple, my lady. A hot bath and a good night's sleep.”
― Margaret George, Mary Queen of Scotland and The Isles

“When he comes into a room, you give a little gasp, deep inside, far inside,' someone once said when trying to describe what it meant to love.”
― Margaret George, Helen of Troy

“I loved him so, even his past was precious to me. I found myself kissing each mark, thinking, I would have had it never happen, I would wish it away, taking him further and further back to a time when he had known no disappointments, no battles, no wounds, as I erased each one. To make him again like Caesarion. Yet if we take the past away from those we love - even to protect them - do we not steal their very selves?”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“Things do not happen, we must make them happen”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“I had a desire to see something besides my own shores, if only to be content to return to them someday. If I wish to live in my native land and love her, it should not be out of ignorance.”
― Margaret George, Mary Queen of Scotland and The Isles

“The strong look for more strength, the weak for excuses.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“In my experience, there are two things that no one will admit to: having no sense of humor and being susceptible to flattery.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“Thus we use our supposed "knowledge" of others to speak on their behalf, and condemn them for their words we ourselves put in their silent mouths.”
― Margaret George, The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers

“Defeat I can endure with cheerfulness, my lady. But betrayal is like taking the wind from my sails, or the earth from beneath my feet. It chills my spirits like a rainy day, and all I can do is draw the curtains and cry into my pillow.”
― Margaret George, Mary Queen of Scotland and The Isles

“What is one person's diversion may be another's supreme test.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“Oh, he was just angry, we tell ourselves when someone blurts out something he later apologizes for. But a word, once spoken, lingers forever; to keep peace we pretend to forget, but we never do. Strange that a spoken word can have such lasting power when words carved on stone monuments vanish in spite of all our efforts to preserve them. What we would lose persists, lodged in our minds, and what we would keep is lost to water, moths, moss.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“To love someone is to catch your breath whenever he walks in the room.”
― Margaret George, Mary Queen of Scotland and The Isles

“Yet we always envy others, comparing our shadows to their sunlit sides.”
― Margaret George, The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers

“You must bear losses like a soldier, the voice told me, bravely and without complaint, and just when the day seems lost, grab your shield for another stand, another thrust forward. That is the juncture that separates heroes from the merely strong.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“Fortune offers you opportunities to create; she does not hand you presents.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“Perhaps life is like an hour glass, with dear ones the sand that slips from the upper glass--the earth--into the second--eternity.”
― Margaret George, Elizabeth I

“Boredom is that awful state of inaction when the very medicine ― that is, activity ― which could solve it, is seen as odious.
Archery? It is too cold, and besides, the butts need re-covering; the rats have been at the straw.
Music? To hear it is tedious; to compose it, too taxing. And so on.
Of all the afflictions, boredom is ultimately the most unmanning.
Eventually, it transforms you into a great nothing who does nothing ― a cousin to sloth and a brother to melancholy.”
― Margaret George, The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers

“Lying in bed, half-covered by the blankets, I would drowsily ask why he had come to my door that night long ago. It had become a ritual for us, as it does for all lovers: where, when, why? remember...I understand even old people rehearse their private religion of how they first loved, most guarded of secrets. And he would answer, sleep blurring his words, "Because I had to." The question and the answer were always the same. Why? Because I had to.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“Now I felt the long-forgotten urgency of lovemaking, when it seems one's human selves leave, to be replaced by hungry beasts bolting their food. Gone are the civilized beings who talk of manners and journeys and letters; in their places are two bodies straining to give birth to a burst of inhuman pleasure followed by a great, floating nothingness. An explosion of life followed by death - in this we live, and in this we foreshadow our own sweet deaths.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“Some things can be recovered. Some things can be restored. But some lost things, we seek forever.”
― Margaret George, Helen of Troy

“But marrying within one's own family can get monotonous. One has heard all the same family stories, knows all the jokes and all the same recipes. No novelty.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“Heart of my heart, bone of my bone, spirit of my spirt, we cannot be held.”
― Margaret George, Mary Queen of Scotland and The Isles

“I was ever the realist, sometimes to my sorrow. But seldom to my regret.”
― Margaret George, Elizabeth I

“The most wicked criminals have God on their lips at all times, for God is the only one who can stomach them.”
― Margaret George, Mary Queen of Scotland and The Isles

“Mary awoke from her nightmare with a pounding heart, convinced that she had only imagined Elizabeth's cruel plot. A full moon was shining into her chamber, illuminating everything around her in silvery light. That was when she noticed for the first time that there were bars on her window.”
― Margaret George, Mary Queen of Scotland and The Isles

“Kindness is stronger than iron bars.”
― Margaret George, Mary Queen of Scotland and The Isles

“One always imagines that the days that change one’s life must be marked with something extraordinary in nature—storms and lightning, darkness at noon, and so on. In truth they are indistinguishable from any other, which is one reason we feel mocked, as if the world is telling us we are inconsequential.”
― Margaret George, Elizabeth I

“...Jesus saw the eternal in the everyday. Your last day on earth should be spent as you spent all your others-- doing your daily tasks with love and honesty... An ordinary day is, perhaps, the most holy of all.”
― Margaret George, Mary, Called Magdalene