“...Mac, I want you to go back to the house and make sure the ladies don't get the idea to go searching as well. I told Eleanor not to, but you know the Mackenzie females."
Mac scowled."Hell, Hart, can't you find something easier for me to do? Go up against an army of assassins in my underwear, maybe?”
― Jennifer Ashley, quote from The Duke's Perfect Wife
“Everything matters.Everything you do touches someone in some way, even though you might not understand that.”
― Jennifer Ashley, quote from The Duke's Perfect Wife
“Hart caressed the letters of baby Graham’s name. “Mac likes to say, We’re Mackenzies. We break what we touch. But this little Mackenzie… he broke me.”
― Jennifer Ashley, quote from The Duke's Perfect Wife
“For God's sake!" Hart sprang to his feet.
Everyone at the table stopped and stared at him, including Ian. "Do I have to be made a mockery of in my own house?"
Mac leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head. "Would you prefer we made a mockery of you in the street? In Hyde Park, maybe? In the middle of Pall Mall? The card room in your club?"
"Mac, shut it!”
― Jennifer Ashley, quote from The Duke's Perfect Wife
“You know women when they get talking. They don't stop for anything but unconsciousness.”
― Jennifer Ashley, quote from The Duke's Perfect Wife
“Never around when you needed them, heroes.”
― Jennifer Ashley, quote from The Duke's Perfect Wife
“Hart, you'd schedule Christ's second comimg and have Wilfred send him an itinery.”
― Jennifer Ashley, quote from The Duke's Perfect Wife
“If this person is a blackmailer, El, I want you to have nothing more to do with it. Blackmailers are dangerous."
Her brows rose. "You've had dealings with them before, have you?"
Too bloody many times. "Attempting to blackmail the Mackenzie family is a popular pastime," Hart said.”
― Jennifer Ashley, quote from The Duke's Perfect Wife
“This was the Hart Eleanor had known years ago, the one she'd agreed without hesitation to marry. He'd had the body of a god, a smile that melted her heart, a sinful glint in his eyes that had been just for her and her alone.”
― Jennifer Ashley, quote from The Duke's Perfect Wife
“You are very cross tonight, Hart. Perhaps the lady disappointed you."
Hart stared at her over the glass he'd started to raise. "What lady?"
"The one whose perfume you positively reak of."
His brows went up."You mean the Countess von Hohenstahlen? She's eighty-two and drenches herself in scents that would make a tart blush.
"Oh.”
― Jennifer Ashley, quote from The Duke's Perfect Wife
“The smile, the look, tugged at Eleanor's heart. Even in the fleeting glance, she'd seen great love in Ian's eyes, his determination to finish this letter and send it to Beth so she could enjoy decoding it. A way to tell her sweet nothings that no one else could understand. Private thoughts, shared between husband and wife.”
― Jennifer Ashley, quote from The Duke's Perfect Wife
“My past is no secret to anyone. I'm a blackguard and a sinner, and everyone knows it. These days, that's almost an asset to being a politician.”
― Jennifer Ashley, quote from The Duke's Perfect Wife
“Hart pointed at the carriage. "Get in."
Eleanor started, and the cake vendor, who'd been watching with evident enjoyment, looked worried. "No need," Eleanor said to Hart. "I'll find a hansom. I've brought Maigdlin an I have so many parcels."
"Get into the carriage, El, or I'll strap you to the top of it."
Eleanor rolled her eyes and took another bite of seedcake.”
― Jennifer Ashley, quote from The Duke's Perfect Wife
“On her head perched a pillbox hat with an absurd little veil. She'd pulled the dotted veil up out of her eyes, but not completely - it hung lopsidedly, dangling over her right brow. Her dark brown dress was filmed with dust she'd raised, and dust caught on her damp cheeks. One lock of hair had escaped her coiffure, a red snake dancing down her bodice. She was delightfully mussed, and dear God, he wanted her.”
― Jennifer Ashley, quote from The Duke's Perfect Wife
Jennifer Ashley
Born place: The United States
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“He shook my dozing soul and threw the cold water of reality in my face, so that life and God and heaven and hell broke into my world with glory and horror. (on CS Lewis)”
― John Piper, quote from Don't Waste Your Life
“Some sleepers have intelligent faces even in sleep, while other faces, even intelligent ones, become very stupid in sleep and therefore ridiculous. I don't know what makes that happen; I only want to say that a laughing man, like a sleeping one, most often knows nothing about his face. A great many people don't know how to laugh at all. However, there's nothing to know here: it's a gift, and it can't be fabricated. It can only be fabricated by re-educating oneself, developing oneself for the better, and overcoming the bad instincts of one's character; then the laughter of such a person might quite possibly change for the better. A man can give himself away completely by his laughter, so that you suddenly learn all of his innermost secrets. Even indisputably intelligent laughter is sometimes repulsive. Laughter calls first of all for sincerity, and where does one find sincerity? Laughter calls for lack of spite, but people most often laugh spitefully. Sincere and unspiteful laughter is mirth. A man's mirth is a feature that gives away the whole man, from head to foot. Someone's character won't be cracked for a long time, then the man bursts out laughing somehow quite sincerely, and his whole character suddenly opens up as if on the flat of your hand. Only a man of the loftiest and happiest development knows how to be mirthful infectiously, that is, irresistibly and goodheartedly. I'm not speaking of his mental development, but of his character, of the whole man. And so, if you want to discern a man and know his soul, you must look, not at how he keeps silent, or how he speaks, or how he weeps, or even how he is stirred by the noblest ideas, but you had better look at him when he laughs. If a man has a good laugh, it means he's a good man. Note at the same time all the nuances: for instance, a man's laughter must in no case seem stupid to you, however merry and simplehearted it may be. The moment you notice the slightest trace of stupidity in someone's laughter, it undoubtedly means that the man is of limited intelligence, though he may do nothing but pour out ideas. Or if his laughter isn't stupid, but the man himself, when he laughs, for some reason suddenly seems ridiculous to you, even just slightly—know, then, that the man has no real sense of dignity, not fully in any case. Or finally, if his laughter is infectious, but for some reason still seems banal to you, know, then, that the man's nature is on the banal side as well, and all the noble and lofty that you noticed in him before is either deliberately affected or unconsciously borrowed, and later on the man is certain to change for the worse, to take up what's 'useful' and throw his noble ideas away without regret, as the errors and infatuations of youth.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Adolescent
“It's like I'm caught between two versions of myself. The person I used to be and the person i'm too scared to become. I feel like I'm looking in a mirror and my reflection doesn't match. I just want to be myself again. Only I'm not sure who that is anymore. Is it the girl in the mirror, the one I've struggled to be my entire life? Or is it this stranger living inside me who wants nothing to do with her? How do you decide between them? How do you know which one is really you?”
― Jessica Brody, quote from My Life Undecided
“The purpose of consciousness—any consciousness—was to achieve infinite comprehension. It was as simple as that. If a God existed, humanity must strive to discover this God and help this deity become omniscient, not just in one infinity, but in an infinity of infinities. This was one possible purpose for her species. But her alter ego, using symbolic logic, had arrived at a possibility she considered much more likely: that humanity’s purpose, together with all life across all universes, was not to discover God—it was to become God. If a single human egg could possess consciousness at the instant of fertilization, how would it view itself? It couldn’t possibly predict or comprehend the multi-trillion-celled being it would ultimately become. The entirety of humanity could well be that single, fertilized cell, unaware that it would grow a trillion-fold more complex and eventually become God, perhaps had already become God, in a universe in which all pasts, presents, and futures existed side by side. Humanity was composed of separate individuals now, but an embryo at early stages was also nothing more than a ball of separate cells. But these separate cells would ultimately become connected in wondrous ways to create something unimaginably greater than themselves. And seen in this light, altruism and sociopathy were far from straightforward concepts, beyond even the complexities that Abraham Lincoln had revealed. Absolute altruism on one level could be absolute selfishness in disguise on another, and vice-versa. The cells making up the human body were selfless; gladly sacrificing themselves when necessary for the good of the organism. On the microscopic level they were being foolishly altruistic, foolishly suicidal, but on the macroscopic level they were being purely selfish—ensuring the survival of the body. And what happened when an individual cell became selfish and exhibited Nietzsche’s will to power? It became a cancer. The cell would break free of the restraints on its own division and become immortal—for a while—until its very immortality choked the entire organism to death, killing the selfish cell in the process.”
― Douglas E. Richards, quote from Wired
“Man's desires are limited by his perceptions; none can desire what he has not perceiv'd.”
― William Blake, quote from The Complete Illuminated Books
The Final Days
Thirteen
The Fist of God
On Mystic Lake
Just One Look
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