Now I must live with the consequences of the choice I made. And I will not call it the wrong choice. That would be foolish and pointless. That choice led me to everything that has happened since, including this very moment, and the choices I make today or tomorrow or next week will lead me to the next and next present moments in my life. It is all a journey, Miss Jewell. I have come to understand that that is what life is all about-a journey and the courage and energy always to take the next step and the next without judgement about what was right and what was wrong.

Mary Balogh

Categorized in : Next Week Journey Choices

A sunrise or sunset can be ablaze with brilliance and arouse all the passion, all the yearning, in the soul of the beholder.

Mary Balogh

sunset passion soul

Every moment is a moment of decision, and every moment turns us inexorably in the direction of the rest of our lives.

Mary Balogh

turns moments decision

There is no happily-ever-after to run to. We have to work for happiness.

Mary Balogh

happily-ever-after ever-after running

Nothing is permanently perfect. But there are perfect moments and the will to choose what will bring about more perfect moments.

Mary Balogh

moments perfection perfect

I prefer to believe the opposite - that there is always an indestructible beauty at the heart of darkness.

Mary Balogh

opposites heart believe

I do believe in fate, Anne-not the blind fate that gives one no freedom of choice, but a fate that sets down a pattern for each of our lives and gives us choices, numerous choices, by which to find that pattern and be happy.

Mary Balogh

fate giving believe

And she was terribly aware that she was alive. Not just living and breathing, but ...alive.

Mary Balogh

breathing alive

There is nothing worse, is there," she said, "than a past that has never been fully dealt with. One can convince oneself, that it is all safely in the past and forgotten about, but the very fact that we can tell ourselves that it is forgotten proves that it is not.

Mary Balogh

forgotten facts past

I am not sure what lonliness is," she said. "If it is not literally being solitary, is it the fear of solitude, of being alone with oneself? I feel no such fear. I like being alone." "What do you fear then?" he asked her. She glanced briefly at him and smiled, a fragile expression that spoke for itself even before she found words. "Never finding myself again.

Mary Balogh

like-being-alone solitude expression

And yet day and night meet fleetingly at twilight and dawn," he said, lowering his voice again and narrowing his eyes and moving his head a quarter of an inch closer to hers. "And their merging sometimes affords the beholder the most enchanted moments of all the twenty four hours. A sunrise or sunset can be ablaze with brilliance and arouse all the passion, all the yearning, in the soul of the beholder.

Mary Balogh

passion twilight moving

This time her heart would not break, even though it would hurt and hurt for a long time to come. Perhaps for the rest of her life. But it would not break. She had the strength to go on alone.

Mary Balogh

break-even hurt heart

Sometimes even the imagination lets one down.

Mary Balogh

imagination sometimes

Fear is a powerful beast, if it is allowed the mastery.

Mary Balogh

mastery powerful fear

I know it is something of a cliche to say that love makes all things possible, but I believe it does. It is not a magic wand that can be waved over life to make it all sweet and lovely and trouble free, but it can give the energy to fight the odds and win.

Mary Balogh

fighting sweet believe

The people we love are usually stronger than we give them credit for. It is the nature of love, perhaps, to want to shoulder all the pain rather than see the loved one suffer. But sometimes pain is better than emptiness. I have been so empty Kit. All my life. So full of emptiness. That is strange paradox is nit not - full of emptiness?

Mary Balogh

pain giving people

I wish," he said, "I had known at eighteen what I know now - that there are some things on which one does not compromise.

Mary Balogh

compromise wish doe

The bad part is life continues. The good part is that the pain goes away.

Mary Balogh

pain

Perhaps she was just looking for love in the wrong places. In all the safe places. What if love was not safe at all?

Mary Balogh

what-if safe looking-for-love

I can be hurt, she said, only by people I respect.

Mary Balogh

hurt said people

Life, she realized, so often became a determined, relentless avoidance of pain-of one's own, of other people's. But sometimes pain had to be acknowledged and even touched so that one could move into it and through it and past it. Or else be destroyed by it.

Mary Balogh

pain past moving