The Lady of the Rivers

The wheel of fortune [...] tells us that we all only want victory. We all want to triumph. But we all have to learn to endure what comes. We have to learn to treat misfortune and great fortune with indifference. That is wisdom.

When you pray, you know that you want something, that's always the first step. to let yourself know that you want something, that you yearn for it. sometimes that's the hardest thing to do. Because you have to have courage to know what you desire. You have to have courage to acknowledge that you are unhappy without it.

All that that I learn just teaches me that I know nothing.

Once more, I am watching the most powerful men in the kingdom bring their power to bear on a woman who has done nothing worse than live to the beat of her own heart, see with her own eyes; but this is not their tempo nor their vision and they cannot tolerate any other.

In a way. Magic is the act of making a wish come about. Like praying, like plotting, like herbs, like exerting your will on the world, making something happen.

Any woman who dares to make her own destiny will always put herself in danger.

I put the charm bracelet away in the purse and return it to my jewel case. I don't need a spell to foresee the future; I am going to make it happen.

When a man wants a mystery, it is generally better to leave him mystified. Nobody loves a clever woman.

I am, at this moment, what I have always been to him: an object of beauty. He has never loved me as a woman.

Sometimes you cannot help what you hear, you cannot help what you see.

I am a queen" she observes. "It is natural that men are going to gather round me, hoping for a smile.

I cannot know what the future will bring us," he says in a rapid undertone. "I cannot know where you will be given in marriage, nor what life might hold for me. But I can't let you go without telling you--without telling you at least once--that I love you." I snatch a breath at the words. "Woodville--" "I can offer you nothing; I am next to nothing, and you are the greatest lady in France. But I wanted you to know, I love you and I want you, and I have done since the day I first saw you." "I should--" "I have to tell you, you have to know. I have loved you honorably as a knight should do his lady, and I have loved you passionately as a man might a woman; and now, before I leave you, I want to tell you that I love you, I love you--" He breaks off and looks at me desperately. "I had to tell you," he repeats.

Everything that highly educated men can do to obscure a simple truth, to make a woman doubt her feelings, to make her own thoughts a muddle, they do to her. They use their learning as a hurdle to herd her one way and then the other and then finally trap her in contradictions of which she can make no sense.

He is fragile, like a prince of ice, of glass.

He has lost his print upon the earth; he has lost any fire.

But I want to be loved. I have always been loved. I want my husband to love me with a passion, like in a troubadour tale, like a knight.

I don't know how much we will rise," I say stoutly. "And I have no fear of falling. He looks at me. "You are ambitious to rise?" "We are all on fortune's wheel," I say. "Without a doubt we will rise. We may fall. But still I have no fear of it.

Personally, I don't think that having a water goddess for an ancestress is a guarantee of freedom against seasickness, nor come to that, shipwreck.

I will make my own future, not predict it. I don’t need a charm to tell me what I hope will happen. I throw the gold charm which is like a wedding ring up in the air and catch it before it falls. This is my choice. I don’t need magic to reveal my desire. The enchantment is already done: I am in love; I am sworn to a man of earth; I am not going to give this man up. All I have to do is consider how we can stay together.

She tried to live like an ordinary woman, but some women cannot live an ordinary life.

Before God, I love you and cherish you more than anything in the world. Of course I want to marry you. I love you heart and soul.

I am marrying the finest man I have ever known.” “It will cost you dear,” he warns. “It would be worse to lose him.

You have to sit with your longing and know that you may not get what you want; you have to encounter the danger of longing for something without the expectation of getting your desire.

I cannot know what the future will bring us,” he says in a rapid undertone. “I cannot know where you will be given in marriage, nor what life might hold for me. But I can’t let you go without telling you—without telling you at least once—that I love you.

you are my joy. You are worth tens of thousands.

Like almost all girls I don't know the date of my birth: my parents did not trouble to record the day and the time. I only know the year and the season, and I only know the season because my mother had a great desire for asparagus when she was carrying me and swears that she ate it too green and her bellyache brought on my birth.

I would like you to have a beautiful day every day.

The most powerful men of the kingdom have dragged a duchess down and sent her out to be a marvel to the common people of London. They are so deeply afraid of her that they took the risk to dishonor their own. They are so anxious to save themselves that they thought they should throw her aside.