Lady Wesley

“By Jove, what claptrap! Love can turn to contempt in the blink of an eye. When it sours, believe me, only bitterness and misery remain. Such disappointment spoils all other affection. Whereas mature, reasonable expectations cannot be disappointed, my lady, because they can be fulfilled.”
“I will not marry without love, my lord.”
“Nor will I pretend to love in order to marry,” he growled in reply.
“I won’t spout drivel to stoke your overheated fantasies. If we can rub along, that is enough for me. In return, I will honor you, provide for you and protect you.”  
“My father loved my mother deeply, devotedly. He loves her to this day. That is perfect, enduring love.”  
“I cannot promise you perfection.”  
“It’s not impossible to love with devotion. Swans mate for life, why can’t I?”
“Perhaps because you are not an aggressive water fowl with a brain the size of an acorn. You have the option to act as a rational creature and accept that there is no such thing as perfect love in reality.”  
“ I will not settle for less.”
“By all means, don’t settle, Lady Elizabeth,” Clun said and rudely stood up to leave.
“Don’t settle for me. Hold out for a poet. Or more appealing waterfowl for all I care. In the meantime, do not presume to lecture me about the proper basis of marriage, as if you knew better than I.”
― miranda davis, The Baron's Betrothal

“Your average genre novel is like a high speed car chase ending in a massive crash, with death, destruction, and balls of flame, from which the main characters (usually) emerge mostly unscathed. Everything builds up to the crash, and it’s the anticipation that keeps us turning pages.

Anthony Trollope, by contrast, is like a pleasant Sunday afternoon drive through the countryside in an open carriage behind a pair of matched horses. There’s conflict, sure; a herd of sheep blocks the road, two countrymen come to blows outside the pub, the cows in this field are looking daggers at the cows in that field. But the point of the drive is the drive itself, not the destination, because of course you’re just going to end up at home anyway.”
― willduquette

“Perhaps you have friends already who laugh when you do,’ she said diffidently. ‘I haven’t, and it’s important, I think – more important than sympathy in affliction, which you might easily find in someone you positively disliked.’ ‘But to share a sense of the ridiculous prohibits dislike – yes, that’s true. And rare!”
― Georgette Heyer, Venetia

“You need to control your wife.”

“Haven’t you figured it out?” Edward said quietly. “I married her to unleash her on the world, not to keep her under wraps.”

James blinked, as if trying to understand that.

“I married her because she made me believe in her,” Edward said. “Because I wished her beyond your power, not under mine. You have no idea of the debt I owe her. For her I’d do the unthinkable.”

He glanced back at Free.

“If she asked me to do it,” he told James, “I’d even forgive you.”
― Courtney Milan, The Suffragette Scandal