“I do not admire greatness that has no substance.”
— Mary Balogh
“He thought the library door would never open again, but that he would be left to live out the rest of his life rooted to the spot on the library carpet, afraid to move a muscle lest the house fall upon his shoulders. He deliberately shrugged them and shuffled his feel just to prove to himself that it could be done.”
— Mary Balogh
“Suddenly, and for the first time, he was at the center of his own life, living it and loving it.”
— Mary Balogh
“He had always felt that he lived on the edges of life, Constantine realized, watching everyone else living, sometimes helping them do it.”
— Mary Balogh
“And she was terribly aware that she was alive. Not just living and breathing, but …alive.”
— Mary Balogh
“She had made reason and common sense her gods. She had allowed people who did not know what she knew or understand what she unstood to be her mentors.”
— Mary Balogh
“There had to be a reason why they were not going to marry. They had both been so adamant about it.What the devil was the reason?”
— Mary Balogh
“She bit her lower lip hard and blinked her eyes. There was such wistfulness and longing in his voice. Oh, she was going to give him back his eyes, or the next best thing, if it took her the rest of her life to do it.”
— Mary Balogh
“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
“Nothing is permanently perfect. But there are perfect moments and the will to choose what will bring about more perfect moments.”
— Mary Balogh
“And he knew at that moment that love world never die, that it would never fade away altogether. The time might come when he would meet and marry someone else. He might even be reasonably happy. But there would always be a deep precious place in his heart that belonged to his first real love.”
— Mary Balogh
“I can be hurt, she said, only by people I respect.”
— Mary Balogh
“Was he a pleasant man hiding behind a mask of seeming carelessness or an unpleasant man hiding behind a mask of charm & smiles? Or like most humans, was he a dizzying mix of contradictory charactersticks?”
— Mary Balogh
“It is stronge how smells can bring back vivid memories.”
— Mary Balogh
“We are made up of everything we have ever been, Percy. It is the joy and the pain of our individuality. There are no two of us the same.”
— Mary Balogh
“She had never believed in fate. She still did not. It would be nonsense of freedom of will and choice, and it was through such freedom that we worked our way through life and learned what we needed to learn. But sometimes, it seemed to her, there was something, some sign, to nudge one along in a certain direction. What one chose to do with that nudge was up to that person.”
— Mary Balogh
“I do believe in fate, Anne-not the blind fate that gives one no freedom of choice, but a fate that sets down a pattern for each of our lives and gives us choices, numerous choices, by which to find that pattern and be happy.”
— 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
“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
“But there were certain moments in life that forever defined one as a person – in one’s own estimation, anyway. And one’s own self esteem, when all was said and done, was of far more importance than the fickle esteem of one’s peers.”
— Mary Balogh
“The real meaning of things lies deep down and the real meaning of things is always beautiful because it is simply love.”
— Mary Balogh
“The worst thing about loneliness is that it brings one face to face with oneself.”
— Mary Balogh
“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
“If you are never frightened, sir, you would never find out what you was made of and what you was capable of doing. You would never become a better man than what you started out being. P’raps this is what you will discover – what you are made of and what you are capable of. And when you finally do remember who you are, p’raps you will find that you have become a better man than he ever was. P’raps he was a man why never ever grew any more once he reached manhood. P’raps he needed to do something drastic like losing his memory so that he could get his life unstuck.”
— Mary Balogh
“Was memory always as much of a burden as it could sometimes be a blessing.”
— Mary Balogh
“Love is wanting to be with someone all the time.It is accepting the other person with all good qualities and bad and not wanting to change any of them. It is wanting to give affection and approval and comfort and everything that is oneself,demanding nothing in return. It is – love is very difficult, Julia. It is an ideal, rarely achieved in reality because we are all selfish and imperfect beings. It is a dream, a goal, something to be aimed for.”
— Mary Balogh
“But if one had everything one could ever need or want, what was left to dream of?”
— Mary Balogh
“Even friends need private spaces, if only within the depths of their own souls, where no one else is allowed to intrude.”
— Mary Balogh
“Sometimes even the imagination lets one down.”
— Mary Balogh
“One day you will learn that love does not always betray you.”
— Mary Balogh