|
581c87a
|
I can be hurt, she said, only by people I respect.
|
|
respect
|
Mary Balogh |
|
64666c1
|
One day you will learn that love does not always betray you.
|
|
learning
love
|
Mary Balogh |
|
b30b5d1
|
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.
|
|
romance
slightly
mary-balogh
wicked
|
Mary Balogh |
|
8c80204
|
Nothing is permanently perfect. But there are perfect moments and the will to choose what will bring about more perfect moments.
|
|
moments
perfect
|
Mary Balogh |
|
9d740ce
|
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."
|
|
love
forever
|
Mary Balogh |
|
e05c0c9
|
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."
|
|
sunset
|
Mary Balogh |
|
07dff0e
|
The worst thing about loneliness is that it brings one face to face with oneself.
|
|
|
Mary Balogh |
|
4c6945e
|
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.
|
|
love
importance
|
Mary Balogh |
|
00618d0
|
Perhaps she was just looking for love in the wrong places. In all the safe places. What if love was not safe at all?
|
|
wrong
safe
place
|
Mary Balogh |
|
4c0b1c2
|
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.
|
|
romance
love-hate-relationship
|
Mary Balogh |
|
014a483
|
Every moment is a moment of decision, and every moment turns us inexorably in the direction of the rest of our lives.
|
|
moment
|
Mary Balogh |
|
0abe13f
|
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."
|
|
past
|
Mary Balogh |
|
ec87575
|
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 enou..
|
|
|
Mary Balogh |
|
6c4ed37
|
I prefer to believe the opposite - that there is always an indestructible beauty at the heart of darkness.
|
|
ugly
|
Mary Balogh |
|
b8db76b
|
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 ..
|
|
pain
trust
heart
love-give
receive
|
Mary Balogh |
|
64d4901
|
But if one had everything one could ever need or want, what was left to dream of?
|
|
want
need
|
Mary Balogh |
|
04be0b9
|
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.
|
|
layer
petal
shallow
rose
|
Mary Balogh |
|
a78eae6
|
Stop being so fruitlessly busy and
|
|
|
Mary Balogh |
|
a3fba18
|
I have read somewhere that we often spend a lifetime searching for what we already have.
|
|
|
Mary Balogh |
|
b3ba276
|
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.
|
|
magic
love
wand
|
Mary Balogh |
|
06c8c77
|
The suffering of a loved one was in many ways worse than one's one suffering because it left one feeling so very helpless.
|
|
suffering
|
Mary Balogh |
|
08e1b50
|
And she was terribly aware that she was alive. Not just living and breathing, but ...alive.
|
|
live
breath
|
Mary Balogh |
|
9c4ed2e
|
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?
|
|
time
wrong
|
Mary Balogh |
|
e16471f
|
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.
|
|
romantic
relationships
romance
|
Mary Balogh |
|
58c74ff
|
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.
|
|
pain
touc
avoid
|
Mary Balogh |
|
eaf7a3e
|
Even friends need private spaces, if only within the depths of their own souls, where no one else is allowed to intrude.
|
|
intrude
private
souls
|
Mary Balogh |
|
9bc686b
|
The bad part is life continues. The good part is that the pain goes away.
|
|
pain
life
|
Mary Balogh |
|
7ca9c95
|
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 journe..
|
|
next
moment
|
Mary Balogh |
|
767539b
|
I am not sure what lonliness is," she said. "If it is not literally being solitary, is it the fear of solitude, of being alone with oneself? I feel no such fear. I like being alone." "What do you fear then?" he asked her. She glanced briefly at him and smiled, a fragile expression that spoke for itself even before she found words. "Never finding myself again...."
|
|
|
Mary Balogh |
|
88c4531
|
I wish," he said, "I had known at eighteen what I know now - that there are some things on which one does not compromise."
|
|
eighteen
|
Mary Balogh |
|
09a82cd
|
Sometimes now was enough. Sometimes it was everything.
|
|
now
|
Mary Balogh |
|
2f568f1
|
There is something infinitely better than happily-ever-after. There is happiness. Happiness is a living, dynamic thing, Eve, and has to be worked on every moment for the rest of our lives. It is a far more exciting prospect than that silly static idea of a happily-ever-after. Would you not agree?" - Aidan Bedwyn"
|
|
|
Mary Balogh |
|
dfeb201
|
My happiness has to come from within myself or it is too fragile a thing to be of any use to me and too much of a burden to benefit any of my loved ones.
|
|
|
Mary Balogh |
|
db2a078
|
There is no happily-ever-after to run to. We have to work for happiness.
|
|
work
|
Mary Balogh |
|
74cbe17
|
Always guarding one's real, precious self in a cocoon of tranquility within a thousand masks. Life itself had become a secret affair.
|
|
secret
life
mask
|
Mary Balogh |
|
e1d1c27
|
Love, I have discovered, does not judge. It just is.
|
|
|
Mary Balogh |
|
fb62407
|
Did she ever feel nostalgia for any of her girlhood dreams? But life was made up of a succession of dreams, some few to be realized, most to be set aside as time went on, one or two to persist for a lifetime. It was knowing when to abandon a dream, perhaps, that mattered and distinguished the successful people in life from the sad, embittered persons who never moved on from the first of life's great disappointments. Or from the airy dreamer..
|
|
hopes
|
Mary Balogh |
|
59df4c4
|
This time her heart would not break, even though it would hurt and hurt for a long time to come. Perhaps for the rest of her life. But it would not break. She had the strength to go on alone.
|
|
|
Mary Balogh |
|
d1f451c
|
Love did not have to make sense. It did not have to be worthy. It did not have to be earned. It did not have to woo. It just simply was.
|
|
love
worthy
woo
|
Mary Balogh |
|
ff4c9e3
|
The people we love are usually stronger than we give them credit for. It is the nature of love, perhaps, to want to shoulder all the pain rather than see the loved one suffer. But sometimes pain is better than emptiness. I have been so empty Kit. All my life. So full of emptiness. That is strange paradox is nit not - full of emptiness?
|
|
|
Mary Balogh |
|
5d8ba3c
|
Sometimes it just seems that love is not enough, does it?
|
|
love
|
Mary Balogh |
|
7f5adce
|
I am free, you see," she said, "to love or to withhold love. Love and dependence need no longer be the same thing to me. I am free to love. that is why I love you and it is the way I love you. If you have come here, Kit, because you think you owe me something, because you believe I might crumble without your protection, then go away again with my blessing and find happiness with someone else." "I love you," he said again."
|
|
|
Mary Balogh |
|
cc51a19
|
Tears never were worth the effort of crying them.
|
|
sorrow
tears
|
Mary Balogh |
|
9e49c0d
|
It was strange how the heart clung to hope even when there was no reasonable basis for it, Morgan found. And how life went on.
|
|
life
|
Mary Balogh |