Along For the Ride

He was the closest thing I'd ever had to something, or someone, that mattered. But in the end, close didn't count. You were either in, or you weren't.

It's still a memory worth having, even if it's not exactly what you imagined.

Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke's Heart

"I . . . hit him . . . elsewhere."
"Where?"
"In his . . .In his inguine."
"Oh, dear God." It was unclear whether Ralston's words were meant as prayer or blasphemy.
What was clear was that the woman was a gladiator.

"He called me a pie!" she announced, defensively. There was a pause. "Wait. That's not right."
"A tart?"
"Yes! That's it!

"Juliana?" the words were low and far too calm for her husband, who had found that he rather enjoyed the full spectrum of emotion now that he had experienced it.
"Yes?"
"What are you doing twenty feet in the air?"
"Looking for a book."
"Would you mind very much returning to the earth? What are you thinking, climbing to the rafters in your condition?"
"I am not an invalid, Simon, I still have use of all my extremes."
"You do indeed - particularly your extreme ability to try my patience. I believe, however, that you mean extremities."

Yes, she was a scandal.
Her brother simply didn't know it.
"I fell in the Serpentine today."
"Yes, well, that doesn't usually happen to women in London. But it's not so much of a scandal as it is a challenge."

The Last Don

What is past is past. never go back. Not for excuses. Not for justification, not for happiness. You are what you are, the world is what it is.

All Quiet in the Western Front

Our thoughts are clay, they are moulded with the changes of the days;--when we are resting they are good; under fire, they are dead. Fields of craters within and without.

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another." 

Pride and Prejudice

     A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.
     It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Slightly Sinful

"If you are never frightened, sir, you would never find out what you was made of and what you was capable of doing. You would never become a better man than what you started out being. P'raps this is what you will discover - what you are made of and what you are capable of. And when you finally do remember who you are, p'raps you will find that you have become a better man than he ever was. P'raps he was a man why never ever grew any more once he reached manhood. P'raps he needed to do something drastic like losing his memory so that he could get his life unstuck."

"But it is only people who have plenty of money who can despise it. To the rest of us it is important. It can at least put food in our stomachs clothes on our backs, and it can at least feed our dreams."

"Had he healed one wound only to open another?"

"Where was Bewcastle?
But then he was there, standing on the terrace some distance away, and such was the power of his presence that everyone seemed to sense it an fell back away from Alleyne even as they stopped talking. There was still all sorts of noise, of course - horses, carriage wheels, voices, the water spouting out of the fountain - but it seemed to Alleyne as if complete silence fell.
Bewcastle had already seen him. His gaze was steady and silver-eyed and inscrutable. His hand reached for the gold-handled, jewel-studded quizzing glass he always wore with formal attire and raised it halfway to his eyes in a characteristic gesture. Then he came striding along the terrace with uncharacteristic speed and did not stop coming until he had caught Alleyne up in a tight, wordless embrace that lasted perhaps a whole minute while Alleyne dipped his forehead to his brother's shoulder and felt at last that he was safe.
It was an extraordinary moment. He had been little more than a child when his father died, but Wulfric himself had been only seventeen. Alleyne had never thought of him as a father figure. Indeed, he had often resented the authority his brother wielded over them with such unwavering strictness, and often with apparant impersonality and lack of humor. He had always thought of his eldest brother as aloof, unfeeling, totally self sufficient. A cold fish. And yet it was in Wulfric's arm that he felt his homecoming most acutely. He felt finally and completely and unconditionally loved.
An extraordinary moment indeed."

"Tonight seems eons away, but there are these moments."

Night Game

Life gives us choices. You either grab on with both hands and just go for it, or you sit on the sidelines.

Maybe This Time

You could forgive a lot if somebody was there to take care of things until you grew up.