Top 32 Rueful Quotes
#1. In a way I'm almost more rueful about the notion of having a non-ideological Labour party than I am about the personality of Tony Blair.
Robert Harris
#2. I love you, Callie. The war is over, but" - He smiled, a crooked, rueful, tender smile - "my life is just beginning," he told her.
Heather Graham
#3. What?" I ask the back of his head. "Now you're giving me the silent treatment?" His shoulders jiggle up and down. You know, one of those wry, silent chuckles, accompanied by a rueful shake of the head. Girls! So silly.
Rick Yancey
#4. I leaned back in my chair, stretching luxuriantly, delibrately letting my jacket fall open. Predictably, his eyes moved down my body-some things outlast even the change. I grinned and he looked away, a rueful smile twitching at his lips. I finished breakfast in peace.
Karen Chance
#5. I had a conversation with somebody. It was an epiphany." His voice was rueful. He rocked her. "From that point on I swore I would never eat something that could talk.
Thea Harrison
#6. I am a sassenach, after all," I said, seeing it. He touched my face briefly with a rueful smile. "Aye, mo duinne. But you're my sassenach.
Diana Gabaldon
#7. He gave me a rueful smile, his brown eyes so endearing. I could tell he was about to say something funny. I just knew him that well. That's like asking if I'm a fan of cancer. I fucking hate it, but do I know how to get rid of it? Not fucking likely.
R.K. Lilley
#8. Nicholas felt a rueful smile spread across his face. And a curse be on him for it, because now he knew her. She'd shown him her mind, and she'd opened up her heart, and now he knew the taste of her tears. And he was wrecked.
Alexandra Bracken
#9. Sherlock Holmes and I surveyed this curt announcement and the rueful face behind it, until the comical side of the affair so completely overtopped every other consideration that we both burst out into a roar of laughter.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#10. Or do you mean to rule over a realm of seals and otters?"
She gave a rueful laugh. "Otters might be easier to rule than men, I grant you. And seals are smarter.
George R R Martin
#11. He expects me turn up for the inspection, glance through all of this, and then scurry back to Ohnlei to get on with my life. Marcus gave a rueful smile. More fool him. He doesn't know I haven't got a life.
Django Wexler
#12. I knew that I shouldn't have, but I did it all the same; and there you have my epitaph, or one of them, because my grave is going to require a monument inscribed on all four sides with rueful mottoes, in small characters, set close together.
Michael Chabon
#13. Daisy Bowman," he said unevenly, "I'd spend eternity in hell for one hour with you." "Is that how long it takes? An hour?" His reply was rueful. "Sweetheart, at this point it would be a miracle if I lasted one minute.
Lisa Kleypas
#14. Where will you go?" "To the safest place in London," he says with a rueful smile. "A place that loved your husband and will never forgive Duke Richard for betraying him. The only honest business in London." "Where d'you mean?" "The whorehouse," he says with a grin.
Philippa Gregory
#15. All the sanguine guesswork of youth is there, and the silliness; all the novelty of being alive and impressed by the urgency of tremendous trivialities.
Siegfried Sassoon
#16. Oi, lovebirds!" Puck's voice shattered the quiet, bouncing through the darkness.
Ash pulled back with a rueful look. "Get a room, would ya? We've got better things to
do than watch you suck face!
Julie Kagawa
#17. There's no such thing as a tax on happiness," Helen said, rubbing her forehead.
The countess regarded her with rueful sympathy. "My poor girl... it certainly can't be had for free.
Lisa Kleypas
#18. In his grief over the loss of a dog, a little boy stands for the first time on tiptoe, peering into the rueful morrow of manhood. After this most inconsolable of sorrows there is nothing life can do to him that he will not be able somehow to bear.
James Thurber
#19. All men press, one way or another," she said with mock severity.
"They're still keeping to their book then?"
Denna's expression grew rueful and she sighed. "I used to hope they'd disregard the book with age. Instead I've found they've merely turned a page.
Patrick Rothfuss
#20. I thought, too, about time. How fleet it is, and how certain, and like death how indifferent to our commentary upon it. Once not long before we had been boys and girls, and soon we would be middle-aged, thickening with rueful pleasure toward the thinness of old age.
Charles Finch
#21. Sweet Mercy! to the gates of heaven This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven; The rueful conflict, the heart riven With vain endeavour, And memory of Earth's bitter leaven Effaced forever.
William Wordsworth
#22. Men," she said rueful, "are the most absurd creatures on this green earth." "But there are camels," Gabriel pointed out. "Believe me," she answered. "I've taken camels into consideration.
Zoe Archer
#24. But the character of the music emphasized the tale as allegory
humorous, poignant, humane allegory
disclosing the metamorphosis of life itself, in which man moves from confident inexperience through the bitterness of experience, toward the rueful wisdom of self-knowledge.
Robertson Davies
#25. And he was not angry. But, before the pain set in, he had the time to be rueful. He had laid everything out, the best of himself, and it had not been enough. He had considered himself a bohemian, but she had proved too bohemian for him. And he had failed to understand her explanation of herself.
Julian Barnes
#26. Clem rubbed at her face with her cuff and gave a quick, rueful smile. 'It's just so sad. It's the umpteenth time I've read it, and I will always think it will have a different ending. But it never does.
Anna Hope
#27. What?" I asked uneasily. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
He shook his head, the smile rueful now. "Because sometimes, a person can get so caught up in the details that they miss the whole. It's not just the dress or the hair. It's YOU. You're beautiful. So beautiful, it hurts me.
Richelle Mead
#29. Rueful, bittersweet, funny, written with tenderness and bite, Merrill Feitell's stories, like so many classic short stories, are made from the plain and painful stuff of this world, and haunted by the possibility, and the impossibility, of a better one.
Michael Chabon
#30. The pain'll start creeping in again by midnight, but that should give us enough time to talk this through." He sipped again and gave me a look of rueful amusement. "Human things are terrific right to the end, it seems like. I never would have guessed.
Stephen King
#32. "I tried, once," said Bernard, with a rueful smile. "Yup! I tried." He gazed thoughtfully out the window.
Carey Rockwell