Quotes from Mary Balogh

But parents, she supposed, were not the pinnacle of perfection their children thought or expected them to be. They were humans who usually did the best they could but often made the wrong choices.

I have always been a spectator of life, you know, never a participant. Never. But now I am. Today I am, and I an awed and deliriously happy. This is the adventure I asked for, the adventure I am having I will be forever grateful to you.

One who has conquered every aspect of his pain except the deepest.

How easy it is to dismiss the outer packaging without an inkling that one is thereby missing the precious beauty within.

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?

I do not admire greatness that has no substance.

He offered his arm and she took it. And the world was the same place. And forever different.

I do not believe there is right or wrong, he said. there is only doing what one must do under given circumstances and living with the consequences and weaving every experiences, good and bad, into the fabric of one's life so that ultimately one can see the pattern of it all and accept the lessons life has taught.

There is a terrible pain," she said softly, "about being abandoned by someone who loves someone else more than you. A pain and an emptiness and a determination never again to give anyone that power.

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.

Why was it that silence sometimes felt like a physical thing with a weight of its own?

Why did people assume that the beautiful among them needed nothing but their beauty to bring them happiness? That behind the beauty there was nothing but an empty shell, insensitive shell?

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.

The real meaning of things lies deep down and the real meaning of things is always beautiful because it is simply love.

Why do I want to run from happiness?

Living in a house with a large library," she said, "is a little like living in heaven

Fear must be challenged, I have found. It is a powerful beat if it is allowed the mastery.

But only a person in the depths of despair neglected to look beyond winter to the spring that inevitably followed, bringing back color and life and hope.

But that is what life is all about, he said. It is about dreaming and making those dreams come true with effort and determination - and love.

It is also for stepping into the unknown, Claudia said, when it would be easier to cling what it familiar and safe.

And so silence and ...darkness hold happiness and joy? he said softly. Assuredly, she said, provided one listens to the silence and gazes deeply into the darkness. Everything is there. Everything.

Could a love of that magnitude die? If it was true love, could it ever die? Was there such a thing as true love?

We all learn to bury a broken heart beneath layers of dignity

When I was nineteen, she said, I was in love with being in love, I think. And I was given no chance to discover how deep - or not deep - that love would have gone.