Top 250 Georgette Heyer Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You’re only a man! You’ve not our gifts! I can tell you! Why, a woman can think of a hundred different things at once, all them contradictory!”

— Georgette Heyer

2. “I am relieved. May I now have the truth?”

— Georgette Heyer

3. “God knows I’m no saint, but I don’t think I’m more of a sinner than any other man.”

— Georgette Heyer

4. “The more enchanted the idyll, greater must be the pain of its ending.”

— Georgette Heyer

5. “You may have married her, but she is mine. Do you think I shall let you take her? She may be ten times your wife, but, by God, you shall never have her.”

— Georgette Heyer

6. “As soon as one promises not to do something, it becomes the one thing above all others that one most wishes to do.”

— Georgette Heyer

7. “And don’t you say that it is very kind and obliging of him, sir, like Jessamy, because if you don’t like a person, you don’t wish to be obliged to him!”

— Georgette Heyer

8. “Well, you have the right to make a sacrifice of yourself, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let you sacrifice me!”

— Georgette Heyer

9. “Depend upon it, you are just the sort of girl a man would be glad to have for his sister! You don’t even know how to swoon, and I daresay if you tried you would make wretched work of it, for all you have is common sense, and of what use is that, pray?”

— Georgette Heyer

10. “You have a genius for bringing trouble upon yourself.”

— Georgette Heyer

11. “Do you know, I think that of all your idiosyncrasies that choke you give, when you are determined not to laugh, is the one that most enchants me.”

— Georgette Heyer

12. “Surprise is the essence of attack!”

— Georgette Heyer

13. “You don’t feel you could marry me instead? Got no brains, of course, and I ain’t a handsome fellow, like Jack, but I love you. Don’t think I could ever love anyone else.”

— Georgette Heyer

14. “My dear girl, don’t talk nonsense to me! You’re lazy, that’s all that’s wrong with you. Why don’t you take up social work?”

— Georgette Heyer

15. “Has no one ever told you that it is the height of impropriety to kiss any gentleman, unless you have the intention of accompanying him immediately to the altar?”

— Georgette Heyer

16. “O God, I love you to the edge of madness, Venetia, but I’m not mad yet – not so mad that I don’t know how disastrous it might be to you – to us both! You don’t realize what an advantage I should be taking of your innocence!”

— Georgette Heyer

17. “I daresay Freddy might not be a great hand at slaying dragons- but one has not the smallest need of a man who can kill dragons!”

— Georgette Heyer

18. “You are an atrocious person! Since the day I met you I have become steadily more depraved.”

— Georgette Heyer

19. “There is nothing so mortifying as to fall in love with someone who does not share one’s sentiments.”

— Georgette Heyer

20. “A voice that to Dominica’s fancy seemed to hold all the sunshine and the salt wind of fine days at sea smote her ears.”

— Georgette Heyer

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21. “I comfort myself with the reflection that your wife will possibly be able to curb your desire – I admit, a natural one for the most part – to exterminate your fellows.”

— Georgette Heyer

Featured in: Romance Quotes

22. “Let me tell you, my girl, that I’m swallowing no more of your insults! And if I hear another word from you in disparagement of the Corinthian set it will be very much the worse for you!”

— Georgette Heyer

23. “Will you marry me, vile and abominable girl that you are? Yes, but, mind, it only to save my neck from being wrung!”

— Georgette Heyer

24. “The end of the idyll was implicit in the beginning: I at least knew that, though you might not. And also that the more enchanted the idyll the greater must be the pain of its ending. That won’t endure. Hearts don’t really break, you know.”

— Georgette Heyer

25. “Is it not unsupportable to be held down to a canter when you long to gallop for miles?”

— Georgette Heyer

26. “She decided that her wisest course would be to put him out of her mind. After reaching this conclusion she lay thinking about him until at last she fell asleep.”

— Georgette Heyer

27. “It was growing late, and though one might stand on the brink of a deep chasm of disaster, one was still obliged to dress for dinner.”

— Georgette Heyer

28. “But it is only in epic tragedies that gloom is unrelieved. In real life tragedy and comedy are so intermingled that when one is most wretched ridiculous things happen to make one laugh in spite of oneself.”

— Georgette Heyer

29. “I don’t think I am green. It’s true I only know what I’ve read in books, but I’ve read a great many books.”

— Georgette Heyer

30. “My dear girl, you don’t consent to an abduction! You consent to an elopement, and I knew you wouldn’t do that.”

— Georgette Heyer

31. “Nevertheless, she did not weep, because, for one thing, it would have made her eyes red, and another, it would be of very little use.”

— Georgette Heyer

32. “Of course she is a fool, but so are all girls.”

— Georgette Heyer

33. “Meg, as good-natured as her mother and brother, would have been amiable to anyone for whom her kindness had been solicited. Had she found herself confronted by a dazzling blonde she would not have spurned Kitty; but it could not be denied that the discovery that Miss Charing was a brunette immediately confirmed her in her conviction that she would like her prodigiously.”

— Georgette Heyer

34. “A man who would contract the mumps,’ declared Cecilia, ‘would do anything!’ Lady Ombersley saw nothing unreasonable in this pronouncement, nor was she surprised that his lordship’s unromantic behaviour had given Cecilia a distaste for him.”

— Georgette Heyer

35. “The thought of his high and imposing father’s regal progress to Harrowgate, and his very brief stay there, made Desford begin to chuckle again. He must remember, he told himself, to ask Poor Dear Papa, at a suitable moment, for his opinion of Harrowgate.”

— Georgette Heyer

36. “No, but on the other hand you don’t enact me Cheltenham tragedies when I’ve barely swallowed my breakfast.”

— Georgette Heyer

37. “You will allow that one’s curiosity must be aroused when one learns that a lady is prepared to elope to escape from advances one had not the least intention of making!”

— Georgette Heyer

38. “He didn’t choose between me and you, Julia: it was between me and ruin.”

— Georgette Heyer

39. “Only trust me! You have fallen into a fit of despondency and there is not the least need! In fact, nothing could be more fatal, in any predicament! It encourages one to suppose that there is nothing to be done, when a little resolution is all that is wanted to bring matters to a happy conclusion.”

— Georgette Heyer

40. “He took her face between his hands, turning it up, and looking down at her for a moment before he kissed her. “I do love you, Jenny,” he said gently. “Very much indeed – you are part of my life. Julia was never that-only a boy’s impractical dream.”

— Georgette Heyer

41. “She bowed her head, clasping her hands tightly before her upon the arm of his chair, for her heart yearned towards him, yet could not reach him, and it made her throat ache with unhappiness to meet that look of his that rested on her face without seeing it.”

— Georgette Heyer

42. “How very awkward places we do choose in which to propose to one another!? remarked Mr. Beaumaris.”

— Georgette Heyer

43. “I remember only what interests me.”

— Georgette Heyer

44. “Those fine eyes of hers had a disconcertingly direct gaze, and very often twinkled in a manner disturbing to male egotism. She had common-sense too, and what man wanted the plainly matter-of-fact, when he could enjoy instead Sophia’s delicious folly?”

— Georgette Heyer

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45. “After all, life was not made up of moments of exaltation, but of quite ordinary, everyday things.”

— Georgette Heyer

46. “What do you mean to do when you reach Lacy Manor?’ asked Sir Horace, regarding him in some amusement. ‘Wring Sophy’s neck!’ said Mr Rivenhall savagely. ‘Well, you don’t need my help for that, my dear boy!’ said Sir Horace, settling himself more comfortably in his chair.”

— Georgette Heyer

47. “From being a female sunk below reproach Sophy became rapidly an unconventional girl whose unaffected manners were refreshing in an age of simpers and high flights.”

— Georgette Heyer

48. “This, said Damerel wrathfully, is the second time you have walked in just as I am about to propose to your sister!”

— Georgette Heyer

49. “No one could have called Mr. Standen quick-witted, but the possession of three sisters had considerably sharpened his instinct of self-preservation.”

— Georgette Heyer

50. “She thought, in touching innocence, that in Miles Calverleigh she had found a friend, and a better one by far than any other, because his mind moved swiftly, because he could make her laugh even when she was out of charity with him, and because of a dozen other attributes which were quite frivolous – hardly attributes at all, in fact – but which added up to a charming total, outweighing the more important faults in his character.”

— Georgette Heyer