01c. 1944 ADSuddenly, and for the first time, he was at the center of his own life, living it and loving it.Mary Balogh / quote ↗
02c. 1944 ADHe had always felt that he lived on the edges of life, Constantine realized, watching everyone else living, sometimes helping them do it.Mary Balogh / quote ↗
03c. 1944 ADHe 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 / quote ↗
06c. 1944 ADOne longs and longs to be grown up, doesn't one?," she said, "I dreamed of being eighteen and having a Season and meeting handsome gentlemen even apart from Dominic and falling in love with them and marrying him and living happily ever after. But life is not nearly as that simple when one finally does grow up.Mary Balogh / quote ↗
09c. 1944 ADEither way, he was always staring into a bottomless pit, or into a whirlpool that forever sucked him inexorably inward to its vortex.Mary Balogh / quote ↗
10c. 1944 ADBut a mother-son relationship is not a coequal one, is it? He is lonely with only you just as you are lonely with only him.Mary Balogh / quote ↗
11c. 1944 ADHappy? Most of the time? Happiness is always a fleeting thing," he said, "It never rests upon anyone as a permanent state, though many of us persist in believing in the foolish idea that if this would just happen or that we would be happy for the rest of our lives. I know moments of happiness just as most other people do. Perhaps I have learned to find it in ways that would pass some people by. I feel the summer heat here at this moment and see the trees and the water and hear that invisible gull overhead. I feel the novelty of having company when I usually come here alone. And this moment brings me happiness.Mary Balogh / quote ↗
12c. 1944 ADIf you have always suspected your sister of an inclination to madness, it will be my pleasure to confirm your worst fears.Mary Balogh / quote ↗
13c. 1944 ADThere 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 BedwynMary Balogh / quote ↗
14c. 1944 ADEvery moment is a moment of decision, and every moment turns us inexorably in the direction of the rest of our lives.Mary Balogh / quote ↗
15c. 1944 ADCould a love of that magnitude die? If it was true love, could it ever die? Was there such a thing as true love?Mary Balogh / quote ↗
16c. 1944 ADLove 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.Mary Balogh / quote ↗
17c. 1944 ADLove is a connection with another person, either through birth or through something else that I cannot even explain. It is often just an attraction at first. But it goes far deeper than that. It is a determination to care for the other person no matter what and to allow oneself to be cared for in return. It is a commitment to make the other happy and to be happy oneself. It is not possessive, but neither is it a victim. And it does not always bring happiness. Often it brings a great deal of pain, especially when the beloved is suffering and one feels impotent to comfort. It is what life is all about. It is openness and trust and vulnerability.Mary Balogh / quote ↗
18c. 1944 ADWhy is it," she asked, snuggling closer, "that I so often imagine myself running away and running free?Mary Balogh / quote ↗
19c. 1944 ADI am still not used to being the possessor of such a grand title. I believe I shall have to start wearing a purple satin turban and carrying a lorgnette.Mary Balogh / quote ↗
20c. 1944 ADAfter a few awkward moments, Lizzy joined them and they skipped along the avenue, the three of them, laughing and whooping and altogether making an undignified spectacle of themselves.Mary Balogh / quote ↗
21c. 1944 ADSometimes, one yearns for something.For the ultimate in happiness. I yearn for it,and don't know where to look for it any longer. And I don't know if I would recognize it if I found it. And the longer I look, the more selfish I grow.For I think only of my own happiness. i think I have lost the ability to make someone else happy. If I ever had it. And I suppose we can never be happy unless we can also give happiness.Mary Balogh / quote ↗
22c. 1944 ADAnd I need you, my love," he said. "I need you so much that I panic when I think that perhaps I will not be able to persuade you to come back with me to Enfield. I need you so much that I cannot quite contemplate the rest of my life if it must be lived without you. I need you so much that—Well, the words speak for themselves. I need you.""To look after Augusta?" she said. She dared not hear what he was surely saying. She dared not hope. "To look after Enfield? To provide you with an heir?""Yes," he said, and her heart sank like a stone to be squashed somewhere between her slippers and the parlor carpet."And to be my friend and my confidant and my comfort. And to be my lover.Mary Balogh / quote ↗
23c. 1944 ADAs he had once said to someone in England, though he did not care to remember whom, he had liked the sight of the sea because it represented his escape from England. And he had escaped.But she had said that perhaps it was from himself he wished to escape and that it could not be done. For wherever he went, he must inevitably take himself along too.Mary Balogh / quote ↗
24c. 1944 ADAlways guarding one's real, precious self in a cocoon of tranquility within a thousand masks.Life itself had become a secret affair.Mary Balogh / quote ↗
