Top 80 Eloisa James Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Discretion is a synonym for intelligence.”

— Eloisa James

2. “We all think we have time, you know. It’s this miracle substance and there seems to be so much of it, and then all of a sudden, it’s gone.”

— Eloisa James

3. “Life without a phone is riskier, lonelier, more vivid.”

— Eloisa James

4. “I don’t want Christmas season to end, because it’s the only time I can legitimately indulge in on particular addiction: glitter.”

— Eloisa James

5. “You’re the only one for me. I came back from the dead for you, Daisy. Twice.”

— Eloisa James

6. “If you throw me out of this house, I shall sleep on the path outside. If you return to the Continent without me, I shall follow you. I will build a willow hut at your gate; I will sleep under your window; I will be waiting for you at your own front door.”

— Eloisa James

7. “I have come to the conclusion that silence and time are the most precious commodities.”

— Eloisa James

8. “Dogs are high on life. Cats need catnip.”

— Eloisa James

9. “Rage is a useful emotion. Rage burns away sorrow and disgrace.”

— Eloisa James

10. “Life does not always gives us the choices that we want.”

— Eloisa James

11. “Chess is the most intimate game in the world. It’s like making love. By the time we finish our first slow game, I will know all his thoughts.”

— Eloisa James

12. “One more time, she promised herself. That wasn’t too trollopy. She wouldn’t be too trollopy. But when they actually got to the guardhouse? Trollopy.”

— Eloisa James

13. “It’s better to live like a flame, to know a man and love him even if he can’t be yours, then never to love at all.”

— Eloisa James

14. “Dogs come when they’re called; cats take a message and get back to you later.”

— Eloisa James

15. “I never did learn how to live in the moment, but I did learn that moments could be wasted and the world would continue to spin on its axis.”

— Eloisa James

16. “A stale mind is the devil’s breadbox.”

— Eloisa James

17. “She was everything he’d ever wanted in a woman, and nothing he’d ever thought to find in a lady.”

— Eloisa James

18. “Do you have a handkerchief?” she asked. “No,” the prince said, looking amused. “I suppose you have servants who carry around that sort of thing in case you sneeze,” she said. “You aren’t carrying one either,” he retorted. “I don’t have room; my reticule is full of cheese.” “I thought you had an interesting smell! Most ladies smell rather French.”

— Eloisa James

19. “I would prefer not to throw myself on a funeral pyre. Please come back to me.”

— Eloisa James

20. “For a moment he saw everything in her eyes: a love that would last their entire lives, a vulnerability that would never go away, and, where he was concerned, a deep selflessness that made her the most wonderful, funny, intelligent woman he knew.”

— Eloisa James

21. “Sometimes I spend all day in my dressing gown. But if I do dress, I make myself ravishing because then, I feel ravishing.”

— Eloisa James

22. “If you don’t mind a word of advice, one never asks a lady to set her own price. If you have to ask, the answer will always be more than you can afford.”

— Eloisa James

23. “Life should not be measured by time. The only thing that counts is how one uses the time one has.”

— Eloisa James

24. “Shame can kill the imagination. It’s hard to keep writing in the face of cultural derision.”

— Eloisa James

25. “Some say writing is its own reward. I write for money, but writing for money is not so bad, especially when that writing brings you joy.”

— Eloisa James

26. “A gentleman probably would have risen to help, but James didn’t feel like a gentleman. He felt like a bloodthirsty ex-pirate with blue balls.”

— Eloisa James

27. “Gabriel actually laughed. “Luckily for Philippa, she’s beautiful enought that another man will come along who has the balls to accept what she’s offering.”

— Eloisa James

28. “Dogs do tricks. Cats play tricks.”

— Eloisa James

29. “Let go of the anger, hang on to the good lessons.”

— Eloisa James

30. “The boy in me will always love you,” he said, disarming her with a smile. “The man I am doesn’t know you yet.” And now there was a look in his eyes that she recognized, that resonated deep within her.”

— Eloisa James

31. “Yes, it’s quite amazing how I continue to shock my mother even after all these years together.”

— Eloisa James

32. “Cats always land on their feet. Dogs don’t.”

— Eloisa James

33. “She still remembered sitting for hours as a little girl and pretending to be a hassock. A foot stool. Because if she could just stay very small, and very quiet, her mother would forget she was there, and then she wouldn’t scream about people and places and things that had gone wrong.”

— Eloisa James

34. “Sick unto death, I think they call it.”

— Eloisa James

35. “Beautiful girls in fairy stories are as common as pebbles on the beach. Magnolia-skinned milkmaids rub shoulders with starry-eyed princesses and, in fact, counting two eyes in each bright-eyed damsel would result in a whole galaxy of twinkling stars.”

— Eloisa James

36. “Offended you again,” her godmother said with satisfaction. “Come along, then. We’ll go to my chambers. The butler put me in one of the towers, and it’s utterly heavenly, like being stuck in the clouds except for the pigeons crapping on the windows.”

— Eloisa James

37. “Just kissing, forty-one days’ worth of kisses, nights’ worth of kisses, morning kisses, luncheon kisses, twilight kisses.”

— Eloisa James

38. “I don’t want to have to earn love by giving up my ability to make decisions that determine how I live.”

— Eloisa James

39. “For a moment, she remembered the pain of being called ugly, and then it melted away like soap washing down a drain. She had told herself a hundred times that she could be humiliated only if she allowed it: now she needed to believe it.”

— Eloisa James

40. “All the buildings lining rue de Conservatoire are constructed of cream marble or limestone. When I went outside today, the sky was pale and fierce, on the very cusp of rain. From the top of the church and the conservatory, the contrast was almost imperceptible, as if marble and air danced cheek to cheek.”

— Eloisa James

41. “I didn’t realize you needed a response. When Hamlet is giving a monologue, he just goes on and on by himself.”

— Eloisa James

42. “Freddie is here’ Gabriel said ‘Lazy sod.”

— Eloisa James

43. “The books weren’t exactly Linnet’s general reading fare, but a desperate woman will read anything.”

— Eloisa James

44. “I decided that since my curves aren’t going to disappear due to gorging on lettuce, I might as well flaunt them. If men like the bovine appeal, as you said, they’re certainly going to get it.”

— Eloisa James

45. “Then he just blurted it out, with no preparation. ‘The truth of it is that whether your mother arranged our marriage, or whether it was all an illusion, I must be horribly obtuse, because I can’t talk myself out of being in love with you.”

— Eloisa James

46. “Yes Leopold,” Eleanor said in a low, mocking voice. “Do start to shine, please. I think I saw the rising, but I definitely missed the shining.”

— Eloisa James

47. “He wanted to grow old with her, or not grow old at all.”

— Eloisa James

48. “There’s nothing I like more than meeting velvet clad peers while wrapped in a towel.”

— Eloisa James

49. “She leaped away from Villiers the moment the note sounded in the air, sadness falling from her like a discarded cloak.”

— Eloisa James

50. “I need to work on developing a new, less irritable personality. though I suspect that an empty nest would be at least a partial cure, today I resorted to substance abuse.”

— Eloisa James