A Dangerous Mourning Quotes

“If we can still surmount what is natural and believe what we wish to believe, in spite of the force of evidence, then for a while at least we are masters of our fate, and we can paint the world we want.”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“Monk had a brief vision of what it must be like to be a women on her own, obliged to work at pleasing people because your acceptance, perhaps even your financial survival, depended upon it. There must be hundreds - thousands - of petty accommodations, suppressions of your own beliefs and opinions because they would not be what someone else wished to hear. What a constant humiliation, like a burning blister on the heel which hurt with every step.

And on the other hand, what a desperate loneliness for a man if he ever realized he was alway being told not what she really thought or felt but what she believed he wanted to hear. Would he then ever trust anything as real, or of value?”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“She is a person of most decided opinions—which is not a criticism. I cannot bear wishy-washy people who agree with whoever spoke to them last”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“They’re empty, insecure alone; they only feel real when other people listen to them and take notice.”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“see nothing attractive in behaving like a fool when you don’t have to.”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“Nothing at all, except that he is human, and by hanging him we diminish ourselves as well.”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“Never, in any circumstance, should you raise your voice, or try to assert your opinions in the hearing of gentlemen, and do not attempt to appear clever or strong-minded; it is dangerous, and makes them extremely uncomfortable.”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“We should respect not only the facts but the law. If we do not, then we lay ourselves open to every man’s judgment of what may be true or false; and a belief of guilt will become the same thing as proof. There must be something above individual judgment, however passionately felt, or we become barbarous again.” “Of course he may be guilty,” she said very quietly.”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“Self-pity does not become you, nor does it serve any purpose,”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“But if you wish to obtain a husband, and surely all natural women must, then you will have to learn to master this intellectual and argumentative side of your nature. Men do not find it in the least attractive in a woman. It makes them uncomfortable. It is not restful and does not make a man feel at his ease or as if you give proper deference to his judgment. One does not wish to appear opinionated!”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“Yes I was afraid sometimes, but not often. Mostly I was too busy. When you can do something about even the smallest part of it, the overwhelming sick horror goes. You stop seeing the whole thing and see only the tiny part you are dealing with, and the fact that you can do something calms you.”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“A miracle,” he said dryly. “Not at all,” she replied with equally straight-faced aridity. “A woman would suffice.”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“I may go alone, Mr. Rathbone, but I am perfectly sure I would not find the ground uninhabited when I got there!”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“I do not need anyone to lead me astray! I am perfectly capable of going on my own!”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“To be beaten was one thing, to surrender was another—and intolerable.”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“lacks the depth, or the courage, to feel anything deeply enough to pay for it.”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“he had no memory of ever having loved, let alone to such cost, and yet he knew without question that to care for any person or issue enough to sacrifice greatly for it was the surest sign of being wholly alive.”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“And if they are forced to a new idea, they turn it over like a child with a toy.”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“And I like their humor,” Septimus went on. “They know how to laugh at themselves and each other—they like to laugh, they don’t see any sin in it, or any danger to their dignity. They like to argue. They don’t feel it a mortal wound if anyone queries what they say, indeed they expect to be questioned.”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“If we can still surmount what is natural and believe what we wish to believe, in spite of the force of evidence, then for a while at least we are masters of our fate, and we can paint the world we want. I”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“I like the people. They have imagination to take them out of the commonplace, to forget the defeats of reality and feed on the triumphs of dreams.”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“what it must be like to be a woman on her own, obliged to work at pleasing people because your acceptance, perhaps even your financial survival, depended upon it. There must be hundreds—thousands—of petty accommodations, suppressions of your own beliefs and opinions because they would not be what someone else wished to hear.”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“The more flawed a man was, the shoddier it was to take advantage of his inadequacies to destroy him.”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“But that horror had brought out the strength in her, as it had in so many other women.”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“How do you forgive someone for not being what you wanted them to be, or what you thought they were? Especially when they are not sorry—perhaps they don’t even understand?” “Or again, perhaps they do?” Hester suggested. “And how do they forgive us for having expected too much of them, instead of looking to see what they really were, and loving that?”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“basilisk.”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“to care for any person or issue enough to sacrifice greatly for it was the surest sign of being wholly alive. What a waste of the essence of a man that he should never give enough of himself to any cause, that he should always hear that passive, cowardly voice uppermost which counts the cost and puts caution first. One would grow old and die with the power of one’s soul untasted.”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“to care for any person or issue enough to sacrifice greatly for it was the surest sign of being wholly alive. What”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning