Top 140 Deanna Raybourn Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Without an expectation of success, one is rarely successful.”

— Deanna Raybourn

2. “But this is a thing that I know – to live with fear is not to live at all. A man will die every moment he is afraid.”

— Deanna Raybourn

3. “She left me then, surrounded by my extravagantly simple finery and I sat for a long time, uncomfortable both with the person I had been and the person I was finally becoming. Caught between the two of them, I felt rather lonely, as one often does with a new acquaintance.”

— Deanna Raybourn

4. “I abhorred weakness of any kind but most particularly in my tea.”

— Deanna Raybourn

5. “Plants develop poison as a protection against predation. Should I keep one out simply because it has learnt better than its brothers how to defend itself? Roses have thorns and yet no one ever thinks to ban them from a garden for being prickly.”

— Deanna Raybourn

6. “You are curious and quick, you have a deft mind, and for some unaccountable reason, people tell you things – useful things.”

— Deanna Raybourn

7. “Ah, that touch of asperity! You are the only one of my acquaintance who is unafraid to spice your conversation with that particular pepper.”

— Deanna Raybourn

8. “People have died for less. I know; I was there.”

— Deanna Raybourn

9. “If there is one thing I have learnt in my years of Good Works, it is that thinking of others can be a blessed respite from thinking of oneself.”

— Deanna Raybourn

10. “I would have appreciated the satisfaction of a carnal paroxysm – in my experience, they bring a sparkle to the eye as well as brightness to the complexion and a spring to the step – but using Stoker to achieve that end was a means I could not begin to contemplate.”

— Deanna Raybourn

11. “Veronica to Stoker: “Does this mean you will stop torturing me by displaying yourself in various states of undress?”

— Deanna Raybourn

12. “Fate is by far the greatest mystery of all.”

— Deanna Raybourn

13. “To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband’s dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor.”

— Deanna Raybourn

14. “What virtue is there in a man who demonstrates goodness because he has been bred to it? It is his habit from youth. But a man who has known unkindness and want, for him to be kind and charitable to those who have been the cause of his misfortunes, that is a virtuous man.”

— Deanna Raybourn

15. “For where thou art, there is the world itself.”

— Deanna Raybourn

16. “Oh, yes. I mean to marry him. But not because I want him to give me a life. I want to marry him to share the life I already have. The difference, I think you will find, is a significant one.”

— Deanna Raybourn

17. “I turned my face to the east and the first star that shimmered on the horizon. He held my hand, and it was the hand of the man I had married, lost and found again in the Badiyat ash-Sham, the fabled land of camels and caravans that lies just beyond the walls of the city of jasmine. To live with him would be a very great adventure indeed.”

— Deanna Raybourn

18. “I would kiss the ground where your shadow fell just to be near you.”

— Deanna Raybourn

19. “Those are facts. Are they the truth? No, for they do not tell you of the heart, and that is where truth lives.”

— Deanna Raybourn

20. “Is there any feeling as delicious as the beginning of a new adventure? To be perched upon the precipice of a fresh endeavor, poised for flight, the winds of change ruffling the feathers, ah, that is what it means to be alive!”

— Deanna Raybourn

21. “I hesitated for all the right reasons. And I accepted for all the wrong ones.”

— Deanna Raybourn

22. “I adored history, not the dry dates and boring battles, but the stories and the people who populated them.”

— Deanna Raybourn

23. “You do not yet know what it means to love someone more than yourself. I have no pride left, no delicacy. I cannot afford it. So I will tell you the truth: I wanted his happiness above all things.”

— Deanna Raybourn

24. “Will it ever be perfect?” I wondered. “No,” he told me with a smile. “Nothing in life is. But, my dear mademoiselle, life is not about achievement. It is about the effort. If one takes pleasure in every step, one enjoys the whole journey.”

— Deanna Raybourn

25. “You men have been forcing us to change our names for the last four thousand years. Why don’t we switch it up? You lot can take our names for the next few millennia and see how you like it.”

— Deanna Raybourn

26. “The afternoon was brilliant, soft spring sunshine gilding the ancient stone to warm honey, and somewhere, tantalising, just out of reach, the scent of jasmine rose above the odours of donkey and charcoal and leather.”

— Deanna Raybourn

27. “Aquinas was a superior servant; he betrayed little reaction to the news that there was a corpse in the chapel. He merely blinked once, slowly, and then crossed himself.”

— Deanna Raybourn

28. “When the light has fled but the stars have not yet shown themselves. That is the gloaming, the loveliest and saddest hour of the day.”

— Deanna Raybourn

29. “Eva Stachniak has given readers a thrilling glimpse into the scandals and secrets at the heart of the Russian Imperial court. With deft prose and exquisite detail, Stachniak has resurrected one of the most compelling ages in history. Turn off the phones and lock the doors – you will not put it down.”

— Deanna Raybourn

30. “In my experience it is far better to tell a man what he wants to hear then do as you please, than attempt to reason with him.”

— Deanna Raybourn

31. “When the wind is right and the cloud is gone, you can see down this road as far as Darjeeling,” I told her. “But it is a long and difficult road, full of perils, and if a traveller on foot were to look at the length of it, his spirit would be overcome and he would sit down and refuse to go any further. You must not look to the end of the road, Portia. Look only to the step in front of you. That you can do. Just one step. And you will not make the journey alone.”

— Deanna Raybourn

32. “Julia Grey, I would rather see you hanged than watch any sister of mine go haring off after a man who will not have her,” my brother Bellmont raged.”

— Deanna Raybourn

33. “You must engage in horizontal refreshment. It isn’t healthy to congest oneself like that.”

— Deanna Raybourn

34. “I have known enough of women to understand they are as duplicitous and vicious as men. If they are capable of being our equals in malice, why not in our better qualities as well? There are no masculine virtues, Veronica. And none sacred to women either. We are all of us just people, and most badly flawed ones at that.”

— Deanna Raybourn

35. “She didn’t look at me and I didn’t look at her. Some questions are so direct the only way to ask them is sideways.”

— Deanna Raybourn

36. “Do not collect passion into the equation. It is a dangerous foe, Theodora, like keeping a lion in the garden. It might seem safe enough, but it might well destroy you. No, do not yearn for passion. Ask instead for contentment, happiness. Those are to be wished for.”

— Deanna Raybourn

37. “If you were a man, your ladyship, I would cordially horsewhip you for that remark.”

— Deanna Raybourn

38. “And royalty are immune from homicidal tendencies? Study your history, Stoker. I think you will discover that is how most of them became royal in the first place.”

— Deanna Raybourn

39. “Men, I had often observed, were never happier than when they believed they were imparting wisdom.”

— Deanna Raybourn

40. “I loved you first and I will love you last.”

— Deanna Raybourn

41. “Africa is a land of dreams and memories. It is rifts of remembrance stitched together with the sighs of time.”

— Deanna Raybourn

42. “I am usually an excellent sleeper. My ability to take my rest no matter how insalubrious the circumstances – along with a sound stomach and excellent legs – accounts for the success of my travels through varied and demanding parts of the world.”

— Deanna Raybourn

43. “I am quite determined to be mistress of my own fate, Mrs. Clutterthorpe, but I do sympathize with how strange it must sound to you. It is not your fault that you are entirely devoid of imagination. I blame your education.”

— Deanna Raybourn

44. “There was nothing more promising than the first stage of a new expedition. Everything was possible in that moment; there was no past, no future, only that hollow in time when everything paused.”

— Deanna Raybourn

45. “God was seldom discussed in our family except in a very distant sort of way, rather like our cousins in Canada.”

— Deanna Raybourn

46. “He gave me a look that was almost pitying, and when he smiled it was the smile of a vengeful god. “My dear Veronica, I am suprised you have not already learned – everyone has a capacity for cruelty. Not everyone gets the chance to exercise it.”

— Deanna Raybourn

47. “Even now you do not know what to make of me and I will not own what I am. I want you to think of me when you eave this place and wonder whether I am merely a mortal or something beyond. A better man would release you and want you to love another. I am no better man. I am selfish and flawed and I have nothing to offer you that is not broken or imperfect including myself, and so I offer you nothing but I love you until the day I die and no man will love you more.”

— Deanna Raybourn

48. “I should never want a man to give up anything for me. I should want him to feel in winning me he has won the whole world.”

— Deanna Raybourn

49. “Why, that is most intriguing. A lady scientist,” he said in a tone of wonderment. “What will they think of next?”

— Deanna Raybourn

50. “In my experience it is the trouble you do not anticipate that is the most dangerous.”

— Deanna Raybourn