Top 50 Martha Hall Kelly Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You have a choice. To wallow in the unfairness of it all or rise above it. Fix it. Let other people in.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

2. “He smiled. “I guess somewhere in a corner of our hearts, we are always twenty.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

3. “Somewhere in a corner of our hearts, we are always twenty,” I said. How.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

4. “Father loved the fact that a lilac only blossoms after a harsh winter.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

5. “By doing nothing you condone it.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

6. “How easy it is to get tangled up in your own fishing net.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

7. “It’s just a thing, Kasia. Don’t waste your energy on the hate. That will kill you sure as anything. Focus on keeping your strength. You’re resourceful. Find a way to outsmart them.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

8. “As the cab drove off, I caught a glimpse of Paul in the crowd and felt a rush of retrouvailles, another one of those words that do not translate into English, which means “the happiness of meeting someone you love again after a long time.” I.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

9. “After that, we were like flies stuck in honey, alive but not really living.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

10. “It’s a miracle all this beauty emerges after such hardship, don’t you think?”

— Martha Hall Kelly

11. “Funny thing about grief: It gets easier with practice.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

12. “Reports of gas vans at Chelmno, Poland, and mass exterminations had surfaced. Hitler even stated his plan openly in his ranting speeches, yet Roosevelt was slow to react and kept immigration at a bare minimum. Saint.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

13. “It only hurts you to hold on to the hate.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

14. “A doctor without love is like a mechanic.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

15. “Sometimes I think husbands complicate life.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

16. “Somehow the Germans lose every war but win every peace.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

17. “We had spent two months in Malmo, Sweden, the place for which God saved all the most beautiful things in nature. The greenest grass. Sky the colour of cornflowers. Children who seemed born of that landscape, their hair spun from white clouds, eyes of cobalt sea.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

18. “Oh, please – may we keep the coffee? It’s all we have.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

19. “Men may leave, but books will always remain true.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

20. “Something wet drifted down to my face. Was that rain? I hoped no one would mistake it for tears.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

21. “But it’s fitting in a way – Father loved the fact that a lilac only blossoms after a harsh winter.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

22. “I marveled at how, with some people, time apart never matters.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

23. “We call that guilt, dear. It’s the foundation of some of our most popular religions.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

24. “Foreigners? Half this country just got here a generation ago. How can you just let people die, David?”

— Martha Hall Kelly

25. “Turning oneself to the misfortunes of others is the best way to dispense with personal troubles. Hadn’t Lord Byron himself said, “The busy have no time for tears”?”

— Martha Hall Kelly

26. “This country was founded on principles of equality and fairness, and you would do well to remember that. I don’t think it would help your business to have people think you harbor negative feelings toward any one group.” “I certainly will remember.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

27. “Can we dispense with the ‘Monsieur’? Makes me feel ancient.” “First names? We’ve only just met.” “It’s 1939.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

28. “Only martyrs tolerate hardship when simple solutions can be found, Dr. Compton. I do my best to solve problems.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

29. “Do that which you fear to do and the fear will die.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

30. “I had to keep my wits about me, since Frenchmen were my Achilles’ heel. In fact, if Achilles had been French, I probably would have carried him around until his tendon healed.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

31. “So many of our Polish friends disappeared in the night with no explanation.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

32. “If we can’t make the results of this experiment go.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

33. “Remember, you may not be of my body, but you are of my heart.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

34. “You’ll be rewarded. I’m sure of it.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

35. “She wasn’t always the prettiest girl in the room, but it was hard to take your eyes off her, like a train accident or a dancing bear.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

36. “The best of life is but intoxication,” Paul said, as he poured cognac into my glass.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

37. “I’m afraid so, dear. You know how important this is. She’s a brave girl. She’ll be fine.” Zuzanna held Julien close. “You don’t know what they’re like.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

38. “For if we stick to just ‘our kind’ we’ll simply exist in this insular, petty world. A world that may be safe and predictable but with the life wrung out of it. Hang on to your grudges, if you must. Stoke your fear. Call in the authorities. But I will support these good people to my dying day, and if the police drag them out of here, I swear to the Almighty, they will have to take me, too.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

39. “You should have seen the stars that night, thrown across the sky in great bunches. It was as if they were watching, looking down on all that, sad they could do nothing.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

40. “To the untrained eye, she appeared perfectly cordial, but after years of watching her in society, I could detect the chill.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

41. “Turning oneself to the misfortunes of others is the best way to dispense with personal troubles.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

42. “Many parents had grown wary of confronting their children for fear of being denounced by them, but not my father.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

43. “The quiz said you would feel a click like the sound of a compact if you were in love, and I felt that click every time I saw Pietrik.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

44. “Paul’s handwriting and held a few to the light. But why read them? It would only prolong the agony.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

45. “Somewhere in a corner of our hearts, we are always twenty,” I said. How many times had Mother said that?”

— Martha Hall Kelly

46. “And keep to your reading. Men may leave, but books will always remain true.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

47. “Yes, but her grandfather was Jewish, so that puts her at risk.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

48. “He called it Serge! and it was an immaculate hole-in-the-wall that had a line out the door on Saturday nights. This was not surprising, since everyone knows New Yorkers, when deprived of good French food for more than twenty-four hours, become impossible and seek it out like truffle pigs. Or.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

49. “Sadly, today authority, not truth, makes law,” Father said.”

— Martha Hall Kelly

50. “Focus on keeping your strength. You’re resourceful. Find a way to outsmart them.”

— Martha Hall Kelly