Bringing Down the Duke Quotes

“Perhaps you can explain it to me, then,” she said, “how is it fair that my utterly inept cousin is in command of me, for no reason other than that he’s a man and I’m a woman? How is it fair that I master Latin and Greek as well as any man at Oxford, yet I am taught over a baker’s shop? How is it fair that a man can tell me my brain was wired wrong, when his main achievement in life seems to be his birth into a life of privilege? And why do I have to beg a man to please make it his interest that I, too, may vote on the laws that govern my life every day?”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“Perhaps this is not a question of staying out of trouble, Your Grace. Perhaps this is about deciding on which side of history you want to be.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“Darling," he said, "I have only begun to love you.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“Tell me,” he said, “how frustrating is it to be surrounded by people considered your betters when they don’t hold a candle to your abilities?”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“She looked away. "I'm well now."

She wasn't; she was suffering from severe stubbornness.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“Hattie pursed her lips. “Personally, I always found a thousand ships a little excessive. And Menelaus and Paris fought over Helen like dogs over a bone; no one asked her what she wanted. Even her obsession with Paris was compelled by a poisoned arrow—what’s romantic about that?”
“Passion,” Annabelle said, “Eros’s arrows are infused with passion.”
“Oh, passion, poison,” Hattie said, “either makes people addle-brained.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“Well, sitting prettily certainly doesn't seem to make a difference at all. If it did, why do we still turn into property the day a man puts his ring on our finger? I say let us try making noise for a change.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“A bittersweet pull made his chest contract. He supposed that was how it felt to miss someone.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“The world of men is a brutal place. And yet women visit our offices, approach us in the streets, and send us petitions with tens of thousands more signatures every year to ask for more freedom. They feel their safety comes at the expense of their freedom. And, gentlemen, the trouble with freedom is it isn't just an empty phrase that serves well in a speech. The desire to be free is an instinct deeply ingrained in every living thing. Trap any wild animal, and it will bite off its own paw to be free again. Capture a man, and breaking free will become his sole mission. Te only way to dissuade a creature from striving for its freedom is to break it ... I, for my part, am not prepared to break half the population of Britain. I am, in fact, unprepared to see single woman harmed because of her desire for some liberty.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“That was why they called it temptation—it never presented itself as something ugly, or tepid, or harmless; no, it came in the guise of glorious feelings and a sense of utter rightness, even when it was wrong. That was why one needed principles. Regrettable, that her grasp on them was so shaky when it counted.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“Because, my lord, if the marchioness believes that the female brain is incapable of forming a sound analysis on political issues, why should anyone trust her analysis on women in politics?”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“There it was, the fire she had sensed behind the ice, smoldering at a thousand degrees hotter than leaping flames. Oh, they had it wrong, the people who called him cool and aloof. He was a man who did not do things by halves, and he knew. So he leashed himself. Untether him, and he would burn as hotly as he was cold, and the dark force of her own passion would crash against his like a wave against a rock rather than pull him under.
He is my match.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“The possibilities may be endless, but the mind is limited. People hardly ever contemplate options outside of what they know.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“But her features were arranged exactly how some primal aesthetic blueprint in his head envisioned beauty. It made her look oddly familiar, as if he had long known her and now she had walked back into his life. Impossible, that.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“If we were of equal station,” he said softly, “I would have proposed to you when we took our walk in the maze.” Oh. The magnitude of this was too enormous to sink in, with her standing on a doorstep, about to walk away. She felt strangely suspended in time, her breathing turned shaky. “I wish you would not have told me this.” Because she could never, ever be anyone other than plain Miss Annabelle Archer, and now she’d forever know how dearly that had cost her.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“The harder he tried to keep control, to keep the thoughts and emotions firmly buried, the more anarchical it all became, as if a lifetime of leashed passion had broken free and was coming for him with vengeance, as if he had only been spared the lunacy of love before because he had been destined to be brought down by this particular woman.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“There was something to be said about debating with a learned man who had nothing to prove. It took more than an educated woman with opinions to threaten him. And that allowed for an easy, absurdly pleasing intimacy.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“The door clicked softly shut behind her. Quiet. It was so quiet here. If she held her breath, she’d hear the dust dance.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“People have many motivations to follow someone, but a soldier will only ever follow a man for two reasons: his competency, and his integrity.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“And why did him knowing urge her to spill more secrets to him? To tell him that it was like a slow drip of poison, this daily flattering and placating of men for a modicum of autonomy; that she sometimes worried it would one day harden both her heart and her face?”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“His eyes were striking, icy clear and bright with intelligence, a cool, penetrating intelligence that would cut right to the core of things, to assess, dismiss, eviscerate. All at once, she was as transparent and fragile as glass.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“Something tore inside his chest, something vital, and briefly, he wondered if a man could die from it. The pain all but took his breath away.

What a way to find out he did have a heart.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“Woman, the queen feared, “would become the most hateful, heartless, and disgusting of human beings,” were she allowed to have the same political and social rights as men. Similarly, Elizabeth Wordsworth, the first warden of Lady Margaret Hall and great-niece of poet William Wordsworth, saw no need for women to have a role in parliamentary politics. Miss Wordsworth would”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“Plato was romantic, though,” Hattie said. “Did he not say our soul was split in two before birth, and that we spend our life searching for our other half to feel whole again?”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“That was why they called it temptation—it never presented itself as something ugly, or tepid, or harmless; no, it came in the guise of glorious feelings and a sense of utter rightness, even when it was wrong. That was why one needed principles. Regrettable, that”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“Plato was romantic though. Did he not say our soul was split in two before birth and that we spend our life searching for our other half to feel whole again?”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“He was, of course, a brilliant man, and an eligible bachelor, too, not too old and with nice teeth and a good set of shoulders…he had taken her to a concert. He bickered at her in Latin twice a week and he fed her apples.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“how frustrating is it to be surrounded by people considered your betters when they don’t hold a candle to your abilities?”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“That was why they called it temptation—it never presented itself as something ugly, or tepid, or harmless; no, it came in the guise of glorious feelings and a sense of utter rightness, even when it was wrong. That was why one needed principles.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“...Even [Helen of Troy’s] obsession with Paris was compelled by a poisoned arrow—what’s romantic about that?”

“Passion,” Annabelle said, “Eros’s arrows are infused with passion.”

“Oh, passion, poison,” Hattie said, “either makes people addle-brained.”

She had a point. The ancient Greeks had considered passion a form of madness that infected the blood, and these days, it still inspired elopements and illegal duels and lurid novels. It could even lead a perfectly sensible vicar’s daughter astray.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke