“Idleness was so often despised. And yet it was on idleness, she knew, that one touched meaning and peace.”
― Mary Balogh, quote from Silent Melody
“Even at its darkest moment, life was a precious gift.”
― Mary Balogh, quote from Silent Melody
“It takes chracter to refuse a man you love more dearly than life merely because marrying him would be the wrong thing to do.”
― Mary Balogh, quote from Silent Melody
“Ah, those eyes," he said. "They can speak volumes, but sometimes even I cannot translate the language. And we never did invent enough signs for deeper thoughts and feelings.”
― Mary Balogh, quote from Silent Melody
“Perhaps we should do the learning - and learn not to communicate, or to do it in a different way. Now there is a thought. Perhaps we could learn your peace if we could share your silence.”
― Mary Balogh, quote from Silent Melody
“Tis what marriage is all about, madam," he said. "Have you not realized it? 'Tis about discovering unknown facets of the character and experience and taste of one's spouse and learning to adjust one's life accordingly. 'Tis learning to hope that one's spouse is doing the same thing.”
― Mary Balogh, quote from Silent Melody
“But Ashley had always understood. He had always known there was a person behind the silence - not just a person who listened with her eyes and would have responded in similar words if she could have, but one who inhabited a world of her own and lived in it quiet as richly as anyone in his world. With Ashley there had always been a language. There had always been a way of giving him glimpses of herself.”
― Mary Balogh, quote from Silent Melody
“Gifts were dangerous things, she thought. Sometimes one succeeded only in taking far more than one gave.”
― Mary Balogh, quote from Silent Melody
“She wondered if she would have tumbled into love with him during the past week if her heart had been whole, if her soul had no been shattered long ago. She rather thought she might have. But a heart and soul could not be mended by the power of the will, she had discovered over seven years. And so she had accepted reality and moved on.”
― Mary Balogh, quote from Silent Melody
“He would never know know her. Such intimacy but no communication, because words - even if she could speak or write them - could never explain her world to him.”
― Mary Balogh, quote from Silent Melody
“That was the heart of the difference, she thought. In her world she had learned to be . Other people seemed to gain their sense of identity and worth from doing. ”
― Mary Balogh, quote from Silent Melody
“It was hard to leave. But it was impossible to stay. He was leaving from choice because he was young and energetic and adventurous and had long wanted to carve a life of his own.
He was going to new possibility, new dreams. But he was leaving behind places and people. And though, being young, he was sure he would see them all again some day, he knew too that many years might pass before he did so.
It was not easy to leave.”
― Mary Balogh, quote from Silent Melody
“There was at least as much to learn as there was to be taught.”
― Mary Balogh, quote from Silent Melody
“She was not sure that her deafness had strengthened her character. She was not even sure she had met a challenge. A silent world was as natural to her as a noisy one must be to them, she reflected. But people tended to assume that deaf persons could function as people only if they learned to conform to a world of sound. What about the challenge of silence? Very few people of hearing ever accepted it or even knew that there was a challenge there. People of hearing feared silence...”
― Mary Balogh, quote from Silent Melody
“Leave love to take its course.”
― Mary Balogh, quote from Silent Melody
“It was in idleness that one came face-to-face with the I AM. With simple, elemental Being.”
― Mary Balogh, quote from Silent Melody
“Eve sucked air through her nose. "The next person, the very next person, who says that is going to know my wrath."
"I'm on a first-name basis with your wrath, sir. I guess this isn't the best time to tell you that McNab and I are thinking of cohabitating."
"Oh my God. My eye." Desperate, Eve pressed her fist to the twitch. "Not while I'm driving.”
― J.D. Robb, quote from Portrait in Death
“Getting back to the issue of the child," Tina said, harshing our buzz as visual, "I really think you should reconsider. He—"
The phone rang. She picked it up, glanced at the caller ID.
"We're kind of busy," I said, a little sharply. The phone was a whole thing between Tina and me.
"But—"
"If it's important, they'll call back."
"But it's your mother."
I practically snarled. The phone, the fucking phone! People used it the way they used to use the cat-o'-nine-tails. You had to drop everything and answer the fucking thing. And God help you if you were home and, for whatever reason, didn't answer. "But I called!" Yeah, it was convenient for you so you called. But I'm in the shit because it wasn't convenient for me to drop everything and talk to you, on the spot, for whatever you needed to talk about.”
― MaryJanice Davidson, quote from Undead and Unpopular
“But for me, if we're talking about romance, cassettes wipe the floor with MP3s. This has nothing to do with superstition, or nostalgia. MP3s buzz straight to your brain. That's part of what I love about them. But the rhythm of the mix tape is the rhythm of romance, the analog hum of a physical connection between two sloppy human bodies. The cassette is full of tape hiss and room tone; it's full of wasted space, unnecessary noise. Compared to the go-go-go rhythm of an MP3, mix tapes are hopelessly inefficient. You go back to a cassette the way a detective sits and pours drinks for the elderly motel clerk who tells stories about the old days--you know you might be somewhat bored, but there might be a clue in there somewhere. And if there isn't, what the hell? It's not a bad time. You know you will waste time. You plan on it.”
― Rob Sheffield, quote from Love Is a Mix Tape
“Yet, after all, they were not bad souls; and though he failed so grotesquely, he did his incompetent best.”
― Isabella L. Bird, quote from Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains
“The flow of the river is ceaseless; and its water is never the same.
The foam that floats in the pools
Now gathering, now vanishing
Never lasts long. So it is with man
and all his dwelling places on this earth.”
― Kamo no Chōmei, quote from Hojoki: Ten Foot Square House
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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