Top 200 Philippa Gregory Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “But I don’t forget and I don’t forgive.”

— Philippa Gregory

Featured in: Revenge Quotes

2. “War does not answer war, war does not finish war. The only ending is peace.”

— Philippa Gregory

3. “When it’s done, it’s done. And no one will know until it’s done.”

— Philippa Gregory

4. “Words have weight, something once said cannot be unsaid. Meaning is like a stone dropped into a pool; the ripples will spread and you cannot know what back they wash against.”

— Philippa Gregory

5. “If it means something, take it to heart. If it means nothing, it’s nothing. Let it go.”

— Philippa Gregory

6. “I believe in me, in my view of the world. I believe in my responsibility for my own destiny, guilt for my own sins, merit for my own good deeds, determination of my own life. I don’t believe in miracles, I believe in hard work.”

— Philippa Gregory

7. “If it has to be done at all, it must be done with grace.”

— Philippa Gregory

8. “I love reading and I love thinking – the reason that I love my books so much is that in order to write them I have to read and to think for years at a time about the same period of time.”

— Philippa Gregory

Featured in: Reading Quotes

9. “This is God’s victory: not mine.”

— Philippa Gregory

10. “I never thought it would end like this. I never thought he would leave me without saying goodbye.”

— Philippa Gregory

11. “When a woman thinks her husband is a fool, her marriage is over. They may part in one year or ten; they may live together until death. But if she thinks he is a fool, she will not love him again.”

— Philippa Gregory

12. “You can smile when your heart is breaking because you’re a woman.”

— Philippa Gregory

13. “Edward lives as if there is no tomorrow, Richard as if he wants no tomorrow, and George as though someone should give it to him for free.”

— Philippa Gregory

14. “Fortune’s wheel takes you very high and then throws you very low, and there is nothing you can do but face the turn of it with courage.”

— Philippa Gregory

15. “The world hasn’t changed that much; men still rule.”

— Philippa Gregory

16. “If a woman is interested in her own struggle into identity and power, then she will be interested in other women. The lives of these, and other women, show me what a woman can do even without formal power, education, or rights, in a world dominated by men. They are inspirational examples of the strength of the female spirit.”

— Philippa Gregory

17. “He may well speak French and Latin and half a dozen languages, but since he has nothing to say – what good are they?”

— Philippa Gregory

18. “A woman who loved him would have to learn obedience, and I was not yet ready to be an obedient wife.”

— Philippa Gregory

19. “For Harry Potter I have all the time in the world.”

— Philippa Gregory

20. “Then life taught me a harder lesson, beloved: it is better to forgive an enemy than destroy him.”

— Philippa Gregory

21. “I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t do anything but think about him. At night I dream of him, all day I wait to see him, and when I do see him my heart turns over and I think I will faint with desire.”

— Philippa Gregory

22. “When they see us dance. When they see how you look at me. When they see how I smile at you.”

— Philippa Gregory

Featured in: Romance Quotes

23. “I have given my word that only death will take me from you.”

— Philippa Gregory

24. “I would know you anywhere for my true love. Whoever I was and whoever you were, I would know you at once for my true love.”

— Philippa Gregory

Featured in: Romance Quotes

25. “Either you have me or not at all. Either you love me or not at all. Either I am all yours or I am nobody’s. I will have no half-measures with you.”

— Philippa Gregory

26. “Sometimes God gives us a moment of destiny, and we have to hear the call and rise to it.”

— Philippa Gregory

27. “The sons of York will destroy each other, one brother destroying another, uncles devouring nephews, fathers beheading sons. They are a house which has to have blood, and they will shed their own if they have no other enemy.”

— Philippa Gregory

28. “To save my son, I would plot with the devil himself.”

— Philippa Gregory

29. “He promised her that he would give her everything, everything she wanted, as men in love always do. And she trusted him despite herself, as women in love always do.”

— Philippa Gregory

30. “It is no small thing, this, for a woman: freedom.”

— Philippa Gregory

31. “You can smile when your heart is breaking because you are a woman, and a courtier, and a Howard. That’s three reasons for being the most deceitful creature on God’s earth.”

— Philippa Gregory

32. “It’s a fool who is afraid of nothing,” I say. “And a brave man is one who knows fear and rides out and faces it.”

— Philippa Gregory

33. “A man will always promise to do more than he can do to a woman he cannot understand.”

— Philippa Gregory

34. “Being a stepmother has worked out very well for me. I love my stepchildren very much.”

— Philippa Gregory

35. “Every woman is a mad ugly bad old witch somewhere in her heart.”

— Philippa Gregory

36. “He is my brother. She is my sister. Come what will, they are my kin.”

— Philippa Gregory

37. “I felt as if we were fighting something worse than Anne, some demon that possessed her, that possessed all of us Boleyns: ambition – the devil that had brought us to this little room and brought my sister to this insane distress and us to this savage battle.”

— Philippa Gregory

38. “One never gets the same summer twice.”

— Philippa Gregory

39. “I love going to London for a couple of days but I need to be in the country. I like the silence, the smell and the seasonal changes, especially in spring and summer. I really feel that I belong there.”

— Philippa Gregory

40. “Some women attract desire. Others do not.”

— Philippa Gregory

41. “I shall be dark and French and fashionable and difficult. And you shall be sweet and open and English and fair. What a pair we shall be! What man can resist us?”

— Philippa Gregory

42. “We the daughters of Melusina,′ she corrects me. ‘Your grandmother was a daughter of the water goddess of the royal house of Burgundy and she never forgot that she was both royal and magical. When I was your age I didn’t know whether she could summon up a storm or whatever it was all just luck and pretence to get her own way. But she taught me that there is nothing in the world more powerful than a woman who knows what she wants and walks a straight road towards it.”

— Philippa Gregory

43. “Anyone can attract a man. The trick is to keep him.”

— Philippa Gregory

44. “Nowhere in the Bible does it say that marriage is a sacrament,” Anne replies. “It was not God who joined us together. The priest says it was; but this is not true. This is the word of the church, not the Bible. Our wedding, like every wedding, was an act of man, not of God. It was not a holy sacrament.”

— Philippa Gregory

45. “I am too dark in my heart tonight.”

— Philippa Gregory

46. “Only fools wait when their enemies are coming, to see if they may prove to be friends.”

— Philippa Gregory

47. “She tried to live like an ordinary woman, but some women cannot live an ordinary life. She tried to walk in the common ways, but some women cannot put their feet to that path. This is a man’s world, Jacquetta, and some women cannot march to the beat of a man’s drum. Do.”

— Philippa Gregory

48. “Wealth means nothing at all if you do not know, to the last penny, what your fortune is. You might as well be poor if you do not know what you have.”

— Philippa Gregory

49. “Tell my daughter Elizabeth – no! Tell all my daughters, everywhere, in all the ages yet to come. Tell them how I died, and why. And tell them to remember this: the future is unwritten. Know your rights.”

— Philippa Gregory

50. “He had taken George, my beloved George, from me. And he had taken my other self: Anne.”

— Philippa Gregory

Featured in: Romance Quotes