Mary Balogh > Quotes

“I can be hurt, she said, only by people I respect.”
― Mary Balogh, Then Comes Seduction

“One day you will learn that love does not always betray you.”
― Mary Balogh, Seducing an Angel

“She was not sorry. And if it was the wine telling her that, then she would tell the wine the same thing tomorrow. She was not sorry.”
― Mary Balogh, Slightly Wicked

“Nothing is permanently perfect. But there are perfect moments and the will to choose what will bring about more perfect moments.”
― Mary Balogh, Simply Perfect

“And yet day and night meet fleetingly at twilight and dawn," he said, lowering his voice again and narrowing his eyes and moving his head a quarter of an inch closer to hers. "And their merging sometimes affords the beholder the most enchanted moments of all the twenty four hours. A sunrise or sunset can be ablaze with brilliance and arouse all the passion, all the yearning, in the soul of the beholder.”
― Mary Balogh, A Summer to Remember

“Love does not last forever, then?"
"He asked me the same thing this morning," she said. "No, it does not - not love that has been betrayed. One realizes that one has loved a mirage, someone who never really existed. Not that love dies immediately or soon, even then. But it does die and cannot be revived.”
― Mary Balogh, Simply Perfect

“The worst thing about loneliness is that it brings one face to face with oneself.”
― Mary Balogh, No Man's Mistress

“Perhaps she was just looking for love in the wrong places. In all the safe places. What if love was not safe at all?”
― Mary Balogh, Then Comes Seduction

“I'm terrified that I will never be able to put him from my mind. I don't love him but I'm afraid that he will make it impossible for me ever to love anyone else.”
― Mary Balogh, The Devil's Web

“And infatuated be damned. He was near to being blinded by his attraction to her. He was in love, damn it all. He disliked her, he resented her, he disapproved of almost everything about her, yet he was head over ears in love with her, like a foolish schoolboy.
He wondered grimly what he was going to do about it.

He was not amused.

Or in any way pleased.”
― Mary Balogh, Slightly Dangerous

“What sort of man could you love for a lifetime?" he asked her.
She was silent for a while. He guessed that she was considering her answer.
"A kind man," she said. "When we are young and foolish we do not realize how essential a component of love kindness is. It is perhaps the most important quality. And an honorable man. Always doing the right thing no matter what."
His heart sank-on both account.
"And a strong man," she said. "Strong enough to be vulnerable, to take risks, to be honest even when honesty might expose him to ridicule or rejection. And someone who would put himself at the center of my world even before knowing that I would be willing to do the same for him. A man foolish and brave enough to tell me that he loves me even when I have hidden all signs that I love him in return."
"Eve-" he said.
"He would have to be tall and broad and dark and hook-nosed," she said. "And frowning much of the time, pretending he is tough and impervious to all the finer emotions. And then smiling occasionally to light up my heart and my life."
Good God!
"He would have to be you," she said. "no one else would do. Which is just as well, considering the fact that I am married to you...”
― Mary Balogh, Slightly Married

“Everyone was a rose but even more complex than a mere flower. Everyone was made up of infinitely layered petals. And everyone had something indescribably precious at the heart of their being.
No one was shallow. Not really.”
― Mary Balogh, A Secret Affair

“Every moment is a moment of decision, and every moment turns us inexorably in the direction of the rest of our lives.”
― Mary Balogh, Simply Perfect

“There is nothing worse, is there," she said, "than a past that has never been fully dealt with. One can convince oneself, that it is all safely in the past and forgotten about, but the very fact that we can tell ourselves that it is forgotten proves that it is not.”
― Mary Balogh, Simply Magic

“I prefer to believe the opposite - that there is always an indestructible beauty at the heart of darkness.”
― Mary Balogh, A Secret Affair

“Falling in love was as much about receiving as it was giving, was it? It seemed selfish. It was not, though. It was the opposite. Keeping oneself from being loved was to refuse the ultimate gift.
He had thought himself done with romantic love. He had thought himself an incurable cynic.
He was not, though.
He was only someone whose heart and mind, and very soul, had been battered and bruised. It was still - and always - safe to give since there was a certain deal of control to be exerted over giving. Taking, or allowing oneself to receive, was an altogether more risky business.
For receiving meant opening up the heart again.
Perhaps to rejection.
Or disillusionment.
Or pain.
Or even heart break.
It was all terribly risky.
And all terribly necessary.
And of course, there was the whole issue of trust...”
― Mary Balogh, At Last Comes Love

“I would be consumed by you,' she said, and blinked her eyes furiously when she felt them fill with tears. 'You would sap all the energy and all the joy from me. You would put out all the fire of my vitality.'

'Give me a chance to fan the flames of that fire,' he said, 'and to nurture your joy.”
― Mary Balogh, Slightly Dangerous

“Happy? Most of the time? Happiness is always a fleeting thing," he said, "It never rests upon anyone as a permanent state, though many of us persist in believing in the foolish idea that if this would just happen or that we would be happy for the rest of our lives. I know moments of happiness just as most other people do. Perhaps I have learned to find it in ways that would pass some people by. I feel the summer heat here at this moment and see the trees and the water and hear that invisible gull overhead. I feel the novelty of having company when I usually come here alone. And this moment brings me happiness.”
― Mary Balogh

“I have read somewhere that we often spend a lifetime searching for what we already have.”
― Mary Balogh, Slightly Married

“But if one had everything one could ever need or want, what was left to dream of?”
― Mary Balogh, Then Comes Seduction

“I know it is something of a cliche to say that love makes all things possible, but I believe it does. It is not a magic wand that can be waved over life to make it all sweet and lovely and trouble free, but it can give the energy to fight the odds and win.”
― Mary Balogh, Simply Magic

“Stop being so fruitlessly busy and dream. Use your imagination. Reach out into the unknown and dream of how you can enlarge your experience and improve your mind and your soul and your world.”
― Mary Balogh

“The suffering of a loved one was in many ways worse than one's one suffering because it left one feeling so very helpless.”
― Mary Balogh, First Comes Marriage

“Now I must live with the consequences of the choice I made. And I will not call it the wrong choice. That would be foolish and pointless. That choice led me to everything that has happened since, including this very moment, and the choices I make today or tomorrow or next week will lead me to the next and next present moments in my life. It is all a journey, Miss Jewell. I have come to understand that that is what life is all about-a journey and the courage and energy always to take the next step and the next without judgement about what was right and what was wrong.”
― Mary Balogh, Simply Love

“Sometimes now was enough.
Sometimes it was everything.”
― Mary Balogh, Simply Perfect

“And she was terribly aware that she was alive. Not just living and breathing, but ...alive.”
― Mary Balogh, Simply Love

“I wish," he said, "I had known at eighteen what I know now - that there are some things on which one does not compromise.”
― Mary Balogh, Simply Perfect

“Occasionally we all do wrong things from right motives. Only time can prove us right or wrong. The past is the past. Nothing can change it now, and who is to say that it was all wrong, anyway?”
― Mary Balogh, The Devil's Web

“Life, she realized, so often became a determined, relentless avoidance of pain-of one's own, of other people's. But sometimes pain had to be acknowledged and even touched so that one could move into it and through it and past it. Or else be destroyed by it.”
― Mary Balogh, Simply Love

“Even friends need private spaces, if only within the depths of their own souls, where no one else is allowed to intrude.”
― Mary Balogh, Simply Magic