April Fleming > April's Quotes

“Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted: and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none.

A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.”
― William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

“There is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“I profess not to know how women’s hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration. Some seem to have but one vulnerable point, or door of access; while others have a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a thousand different ways. It is a great triumph of skill to gain the former, but a still greater proof of generalship to maintain possession of the latter, for man must battle for his fortress at every door and window. He who wins a thousand common hearts is therefore entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero.”
― Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

“Jack shook his head. 'Books. What is it with women and books? My sisters were the same. They were always buying books for boys they fancied.'
Ellie bent down and picked up the stone and put it on the table. 'It's like sending a love letter without having to write it yourself,' she said softly.”
― Hazel Osmond, Who's Afraid of Mr Wolfe?

“What tale do you like best to hear?' 'Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme - courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe - marriage.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“What is wrong with the [tale of] Two Swords?" he asked, even more surprised. "Don't you care for it?"
"There is too bloody much romance in it," she said curtly.
Ah, well, here was the crux of it, apparently. "Don't you like romance?" he ventured.
She looked as though she were trying to decide if she should weep or, as he had earlier predicted, stick him with whatever blade she could lay her, hand on. "I don't know," she said briskly.
"I see," he said, though he didn't. He wished, absently, that he'd had at least one sister. He was very well versed in what constituted courtly behavior and appropriate formal wooing practices, thanks to his father's insistence on many such lectures delivered by a dour man whose only acquaintance with women had likely come from reading about them in a book, but he had absolutely no idea how to proceed with a woman whose first instinct when faced with something that made her uncomfortable was to draw her sword.
...
"I'll stop provoking you, but I will have the answer to a question. Why do you think most men woo?"
"Because they have no sword skill and need something with which to occupy their time?”
― Lynn Kurland, The Mage's Daughter

“....whatever else remained the same, the light had changed, and you cannot find the pearly dawn at noonday. The fact is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with whose nature you are acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few imaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in the continuity of married companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse than what you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogether the same.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“I have a hundred reasons to dislike this gentleman,” Erica reminded herself aloud. “And a thousand reasons more not to go courting with any man.”
Lavinia laughed at that. “Whenever has a woman’s heart listened to her head?”
― T. Davis Bunn, The Solitary Envoy

“During courtship, guarding each other's purity and refraining from intimacy are the acts of lovemaking.”
― Joshua Harris, Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship

“Fire should never be tempered in a female because that's what fuels her passion, causing it to ignite." He lifted my chin with his hand and stroked his thumb gently across my lips. "All a male can hope for is to be consumed by it until there is nothing left of him.”
― Dannika Dark, Impulse

“I challenge a man to a duel before allowing him near me, and then I take an arrow, dip it in poison, and drive it straight through his heart...But that's on a good day...when I purr and feel delightfully amorous. No need to mention what I'd do on a bad one.”
― Donna Lynn Hope