Lisa Kleypas
Most lives are not distinguished by great achievements. They are measured by an infinite number of small ones. Each time you do a kindness for someone or bring a smile to his face, it gives your life meaning. Never doubt your value, little friend. The world would be a dismal place without you in it. (tweaked version of a passage from Scandal in Spring)Collection: Kindness
The earl shook his head, exhibiting a degree of frosty offense that could only be achieved by an aristocrat whose wishes had just been gainsaid. “I’ve never heard of a man being so eager to confess to the parent of a girl he’s just ruined,” he said sourly.Collection: Girl
Sooner or later everyone was driven to love someone they could never have.Collection: Driven
Dear Lord,” she said in a strangled whisper. “I can bear it for a while...but please don't let it hurt forever.Collection: Hurt
...whether he stayed or left, whether they walked the same path or not. They could live on opposite sides of the world, and she would still be his.Collection: Opposites
I was going to have to leave you anyway. Because I loved you too much to drag you down with me." My hand crept up to caress the rigid line of his jaw. "Why'd you change your mind?" I whispered. "After I calmed down a little and had a chance to think, I figured . . . I love you enough to try and deserve you. I would do anything, be anything, for you.Collection: Love You
Sometimes I'm not nice for a reason. It's a way to find out what someone's made of.Collection: Nice
I know when something is too important to be decided by logic.Collection: Important
Getting to a higher spiritual level is like increasing your credit score. You get a lot more points for sinning and repenting than if you have no credit history at all.Collection: Spiritual
I’ve never heard of a man being so eager to confess to the parent of a girl he’s just ruinedCollection: Girl
Shock is a merciful condition. It allows you to get through disaster with a necessary distance between you and your feelings.Collection: Distance
The question, love, is whether you want me enough to take the risk.Collection: Love Is
Why is life so difficult for some people and not for others? Why do some people have to struggle so much?Collection: Struggle
And it occurred to me that friendship was a lot more dependable, not to mention long-lasting, than love.Collection: Long
I want you to admit just once what you feel for me. I want to know if you'll miss me even a little. If you'll remember me. If you're sorry for anything.Collection: Sorry
But it was too late now. A lifetime too late. A million wishes too late.Collection: Wish
A man's vanity is more fragile that you might think. It's easy for us to mistake shyness for coldness, and silence for indifference.Collection: Mistake
I wondered how many times in my life I had done something just because I wanted to without weighing the consequences.Collection: Done
I am running after you, and life, in desperate pursuit. My dream is that someday you will both turn and let me catch you. That dream carries me through every night... I have enclosed a hundred kisses in this letter. You must count them out carefully and not lose any.Collection: Running
If you won’t marry me for the sake of your own honor, then do it for the sake of everyone who would have to tolerate me otherwise. Marry me because I need someone who will help me to laugh at myself. Because someone has to teach me how to whistle. Marry me, Lillian… because I have the most irresistible fascination for your ears.Collection: Laughing
I have so much love for you, I could fill rooms with it. Buildings. You’re surrounded by it wherever you go, you walk through it, breathe it...it’s in your lungs, and under your tongue, and between your fingers and toes...” His mouth moved passionately over hers, urging her lips apart. It was a kiss to level mountains and shake stars from the sky. It was a kiss to make angels faint and demons weep...a passionate, demanding, soul-searing kiss that nearly knocked the earth off its axis. Or at least that was how Poppy felt about it.Collection: Stars
Because handsomeness is always accompanied by vanity.And I suppose ugliness is accompanied by a wealth of virtues?Collection: Vanity
At first I wasn’t all that tempted by him, but then he killed the spider. Which was a huge point in his favor.” “Absolutely. I love men who kill bugs.” “And then when I was freaking out and couldn’t breathe, he was so…gentle.” Zoe sighed and colored, remembering. “He was holding me, and talking to me in that voice…you know, sort of low and rough around the edges…” “All the Nolans sound like that,” Justine said reflectively. “Like they’ve got a mild case of bronchitis. Totally hot.Collection: Men
If I were an opera singer, I"d have sung you an aria. If I were an artist, I would have painted your portrait. But cooking is what I'm best at.Collection: Artist
My lord," catherine asked,her eyes wide, "do you think that has anything to do with the Ramsay curse?" "Actually, that hadn't occurred to me yet," Leo said, "thank you so much for bringing it to my attention.Collection: Eye
I closed my eyes, thinking, Let me love you, Hardy, just let me.Collection: Love You
I didn't expect it was going to be easy. But hard work is a lot easier to tolerate when it's something you want to do instead of something you have no choice about.Collection: Hard Work
Girlfriend, if you're waiting for a fairy godmother to show up with a dress and a ride, you're not going to make it to the party.Collection: Girlfriend
When you're walking through the darkness, you can't depend on anything or anyone else to light your way. You have to rely on whatever sparks you've got inside you. Or you're going to get lost.Collection: Light
I knew I would replay the scene countless times in the years before me, each time thinking of different things I should have said and done. But all I did was walk away without looking back.Collection: Thinking
Everyone striving to be witty and sought-after, everyone talking and no one listening.Collection: Witty
I had to let go of him. But I knew that as long as I lived, I would feel the phantompain of his absence.Collection: Letting Go
I still don’t get why I have to eat breakfast if you don’t,” Josie muttered. “Because you have to be a certain age to earn the right to ruin your own life.Collection: Age
Bitterly I wondered if Hardy was going to overshadow every relationship for the rest of my life, haunting me like a ghost. I didn't know how to let him go. I'd never even had him.Collection: Haunting
It was a confirmation of a connection that already existed. And it was a bond that extended far beyond the borders of a shared living space. We would have stayed together even without a marriage certificate . . . but I believed in the permanence it represented. It was a piece of paper you could build a life on.Collection: Space
Whereas I will be with a wicked, handsome Rom who will keep me warm all night.Collection: Night
Now the line was drawn. Lucy had never thought that one of the fiercest battles of her life would be fought over a breakfast table, with quiet words carefully chosen.Collection: Battle
Thunderstorms and rainbows wrapped together in a convenient pocket-sized parcel.Collection: Cute
You don’t annoy me.” Carefully he rebuttoned the placket of her shirt. “I thought you did, at first. But now I realize it was more like the feeling you get when your foot’s been asleep. And when you start moving, the blood coming back into it is uncomfortable . . . but also good. Do you understand what I mean?” “Yes. I make your feet tingle.” A smile came to his lips. “Among other things.Collection: Moving
Very well,” Beatrix said reluctantly. “But I warn you, they may be resistant to the match.” “I’m resistant to the match,” Christopher informed her. “At least we’ll have that in common.Collection: May
Of all the Hathaway sisters,” Cam said equably, “Beatrix is the one most suited to choose her own husband. I trust her judgment.” Beatrix gave him a brilliant smile. “Thank you, Cam.” “What are you thinking?” Leo demanded of his brother-in-law. “You can’t trust Beatrix’s judgment.” “Why not?” “She’s too young,” Leo said. “I’m twenty-three,” Beatrix protested. “In dog years I’d be dead.Collection: Dog
Win told me that one isn’t improved by being at the top of the mountain, one is improved by the climb.Collection: Winning
I have never said this to anyone before.” Leo’s voice was like ragged velvet. “But the idea of you with child is the most insanely arousing thing I’ve ever imagined. Your belly all swollen, your breasts heavy, the funny little way you would walk … I would worship you. I would take care of your every need. And everyone would know that I’d made you that way, that you belonged to me.Collection: Children
I swear on St. Francis, the patron saint of all animals.” Seeing Poppy’s hesitation, Beatrix added enthusiastically, “If a band of pirates kidnapped me and took me to their ship and threatened to make me walk the plank over a shiver of starving sharks unless I told them your secret, I still wouldn’t tell it. If I were tied by a villain and thrown before a herd of stampeding horses all shod in iron, and the only way to keep from being trampled was to tell the villain your secret, I—Collection: Horse
You’re far too prickly tempered to be a mistress. You’re far better suited as a wife.Collection: Wife
To Cam surprise, she was smiling up at him steadily, her eyes midnight. His expression turned quizzical. "What's so amusing?" Amelia toyed with a button on his coat. "I was just thinking . . . tonight those two old hens will probably go to their beds, cold and alone." An impish grin curved her lips. "Whereas I will be with a wicked, handsome Rom who will keep me warm all night.Collection: Eye
She heard the trace of fear in his voice. The fear that a small boy must have felt when every woman he loved had disappeared from his life, swept away by a merciless fever. She didn’t know how to reassure him, or how to console his long-ago grief.Collection: Grief
The bargain…” she mumbled. “You said I could kiss you,” came his gentle, wicked whisper near her ear. “But, my love…you didn’t specify where.Collection: Love You
The smarter you are, the more reasons you have to be miserable.Collection: Miserable