Anya Seton Quotes

#1. Life is malleable and the hammer is desire.

Anya Seton

#2. He was all sin and mystery, and Miranda feared the pleasures he offered as she feared the fires of hell. Yet when she succumbed at last, it was not because her body was weak but because her mind was curious.

Anya Seton

#3. Truth is naturally universal ... and shines into many different windows, though many are clouded.

Anya Seton

#4. All brave things do good, even if we don't see it.

Anya Seton

#5. The new Queen was adept at fostering loyalty by hopes alone

Anya Seton

#6. I am made of cobweb that tears at a touch. But you, Bess, have fiber like the great seines that seldom break no matter their burden,yet if they do they can be mended again and again.

Anya Seton

#7. How can he be so cruel to me at times - and then like this? she thought. And again her awakening perceptions gave her the answer. He would hurt her himself, take pleasure in doing so, but he would not allow her to be injured by anyone or anything else

Anya Seton

#8. Nay, it's not the Devil been leading her astray. It's books! That girl has been nothing but trouble ever since she learned how to read.

Anya Seton

#9. Out in the world there was all the untried beckoning enchantments:dancing, sensuous music, merriment
and love.

Anya Seton

#10. Cease, daughter!" said the priest at last in a trembling voice. "I cannot grant absolution, no priest could...

Anya Seton

#11. Her lips were drawn to his like a moth to a flame.

Anya Seton

#12. As I grew up I got cynical. I'd see Mother enthusiastic and involved with charlatans. Numerologists and astrologists who charged five hundred dollars for a 'reading' which was so vague you could twist the meaning any way you wanted.

Anya Seton

#13. There are many trails up the mountain, but in time they all reach the top.

Anya Seton

#14. I am sure that no man asks mercy and grace with true meaning, but if mercy and grace have first been given him.

Anya Seton

#15. A woman with opinions had better develop a thick skin and a loud voice.

Anya Seton

#16. There was no such thing as pure happiness. How many years it took to learn that! Always some dark fretted thing which unbalanced the ease one had laboriously found.

Anya Seton

#17. The knights were disgusted. They said that all that fiddle-faddle was well enough for saints, or might have been a thousand years ago, but the Lord Jesus would certainly be the first to command Christians to kill pagans. Rumon announced that he did not think so.

Anya Seton

#18. Mistress Allen was only an ordinary provincial manor lady, bent on nothing more sinister than retrieving money of which she felt defrauded, and in the process either quarreling with or using people.

Anya Seton

#19. It is seldom in life that one knows that a coming event is to be of crucial importance.

Anya Seton

#20. All cruelty and passion must burn away at last to leave behind them only pity.

Anya Seton

#21. Timing's mighty important. In cooking, in life, in love. If the timing goes wrong, you've got to start over. Do it right.

Anya Seton

#22. Miranda looked up at him through a haze of desire, her will consumed by a fierce crackling heat, just like the dry twigs of the old woman's fire.

Anya Seton

#23. Elizabeth knew it was a fast day, but the rumbling in her belly was harder to ignore than the grumbling of the preacher.

Anya Seton

#24. The house of fame, he thought, is built on melting ice, not steel, and rumbles ever with a sound of rumors, while the goddess of fame is as false and capricious as her sister - Fortune.

Anya Seton

#25. In that hushed hour between midnight and dawn when Morpheus' sable hands touch the rosy finger tips of Aurora and even the fairies are slumbering on their flowery couches,

Anya Seton

#26. He wasn't strong. He was weak. The weakest thing in the world. A man who lives only for himself

Anya Seton

#27. If I should never see him again - she thought, Blessed Mother, how could I live, and yet it was the fear of seeing him again which had driven her to this desperate haste. The fear that if he were there so near her she

Anya Seton

#28. to be ME, Merewyn. These

Anya Seton

#29. The soul ... may have many symbols with which it reaches toward God.

Anya Seton

#30. Elizabeth squirmed on the hard wooden bench, and tried to ignore both her sore backside and her rumbling stomach. Why did the minister's sermons last so long? And why did the talk of sin always give her such a hearty appetite?

Anya Seton

#31. Look, bimba - In my country we have a - how you say? - a proverb. Amare, cantare, mangiare. - Loving, singing, eating - these are God's three gifts. You don' need more.

Anya Seton

#32. God's will usually seemed to coincide with her father's, and against this partnership there was no hope of appeal.

Anya Seton

#33. Her body consented willingly to all that her soul found most abhorrent. As Nicholas had promised, there was a hellish delight in knowing she was damned.

Anya Seton

#34. I only know that from wherever it is that we're going there can be no turning back

Anya Seton