Explore Quotes by Mary Balogh

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.

Always guarding one's real, precious self in a cocoon of tranquility within a thousand masks. Life itself had become a secret affair.

Suddenly, and for the first time, he was at the center of his own life, living it and loving it.

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?

I prefer to believe the opposite - that there is always an indestructible beauty at the heart of darkness.

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.

Sometimes even the imagination lets one down.

Even friends need private spaces, if only within the depths of their own souls, where no one else is allowed to intrude.

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

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.

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.

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.

And she was terribly aware that she was alive. Not just living and breathing, but ...alive.

But 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.

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.

The bad part is life continues. The good part is that the pain goes away.

Sometimes it just seems that love is not enough, does it?

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?

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.

Tears never were worth the effort of crying them.

The worst thing about loneliness is that it brings one face to face with oneself.