Top 250 Tessa Dare Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Oh no. Don’t smile. You’ll kill me. I stop breathing when you smile.”

— Tessa Dare

Featured in: Romance Quotes

2. “Just because they’re family doesn’t mean they won’t hurt you. It means they know how to cut deep.”

— Tessa Dare

3. “For this moment, there was no before and no after. There was only now, and now was everything.”

— Tessa Dare

4. “Jesus. Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. Delilah, Jezebel, Salome, Judith, Eve. Trouble, every last one. Add Minerva Highwood to the list.”

— Tessa Dare

5. “He kissed her. Without warning, without permission. Without even deciding to do it, but simply because he couldn’t have done anything else. He needed that breath she was holding. It belonged to him, and he wanted it back.”

— Tessa Dare

6. “Dedication: For all the girls who walk and read at the same time.”

— Tessa Dare

7. “Sleep.” His arm flexed, gathering her tight. “I’ll keep you warm and safe. I’ll keep you always.”

— Tessa Dare

8. “You’re so young, you can’t know the meaning of true regret. It’s never what you’ve done, love, it’s what you’ve left undone.”

— Tessa Dare

9. “Dedication: For librarians and booksellers everywhere, who gather books and build shelters for tender souls.”

— Tessa Dare

10. “After spending all of her girlhood fervently wishing she could run away from home – she’d actually done it.”

— Tessa Dare

11. “She unsettled him; he anchored her. Together, they could be more than they were apart.”

— Tessa Dare

12. “Certainty becomes you.”

— Tessa Dare

13. “Dedication Because little girls don’t stay little forever.”

— Tessa Dare

14. “He’s brilliant at caring for others. He’s bollocks at letting others care for him.”

— Tessa Dare

15. “He ducked, caught her by the legs, and threw her over his shoulder – with the ease of a man who’d tossed many a woman over his shoulder. This was definitely not his first go at lady-tossing.”

— Tessa Dare

16. “You don’t want to ruin the surprise.” “If the surprise is a spike through the chest, I do.”

— Tessa Dare

17. “But when the sun goes down? We’re all just stumbling through the darkness, trying to outlast another night.”

— Tessa Dare

18. “It was one kiss. One kiss doesn’t change anything.” “Of course one kiss changes things. If it’s done right, a kiss changes everything. A kiss is the first step on a long, winding, quite perilous path of sensuality.”

— Tessa Dare

19. “The most dangerous weapon is the one that strikes closest to the heart.”

— Tessa Dare

20. “No, no. Don’t make that face. Every time I propose to you, you make that twisty, unhappy face. It wears on a man’s confidence.”

— Tessa Dare

21. “So odd. Most women of his acquaintance relied on physical beauty and charm to mask their less-pleasant traits. This girl did the opposite, hiding everything interesting about herself behind a prim, plain facade. What other surprises was she concealing?”

— Tessa Dare

22. “People want to leave a mark on the world,” Alex said. “It’s human nature. Some are remembered by their accomplishments, or their virtues. Others live on through their children.” She trailed her fingers over Daisy’s back as she strolled by. “And if he has none of those to leave behind, a man carves his name into the wall. We all want to be remembered.”

— Tessa Dare

23. “Most lasses like it when a man kills the bugs. Along with reaching high places and giving sexual pleasure, it’s one of the few universally popular qualities we have on offer.”

— Tessa Dare

Featured in: Romance Quotes

24. “Wounded male pride has caused the world more destruction than the Black Death and the Great Flood put together.”

— Tessa Dare

25. “Fortune was a heartless witch in perpetual anticipation of her monthly courses.”

— Tessa Dare

26. “But I couldn’t discern what it was you needed to feel safe. I tried everything. Finally, tonight, you gave me the answer. Light. So now you have as many candles as you please. But now it’s gone all wrong. Because you’re here in this bed. But I’m here, too. And God help me, Izzy. I don’t know how to leave.”

— Tessa Dare

27. “Her fingertips rested on his cheek, like a constellation of unexpected kindness.”

— Tessa Dare

Featured in: Romance Quotes

28. “She tasted of ambrosia. Like peaches and blossoms and honey and musk. And just a touch of salt, to make the unbearable sweetness even sweeter still.”

— Tessa Dare

29. “Think of it like running down a slope. If you attempt to slow down and choose your steps, you’re bound to trip up and stumble.”

— Tessa Dare

30. “A home isn’t only defined by what you need, Bram. It’s also about the people who need you.”

— Tessa Dare

31. “It’s only wasted time if you don’t learn from it.”

— Tessa Dare

32. “I need to know,” he said. “I need to know, right now, if you’re mine. I’ve been patient for years, and if need be, I can wait years more. I’ll do anything in my power to win you, to keep you. But I need to know, this moment, if you’ll be mine in the end.”

— Tessa Dare

33. “Every time you wake up, you let fly the most marvelous string of curses. It’s never the same twice, do you know that? It’s so intriguing. You’re like a rooster that crows blasphemy.”

— Tessa Dare

34. “What on earth are you wearing? Did you take orders in a convent since we spoke last? Little Sisters of the Drab and Homely.”

— Tessa Dare

35. “Of course you don’t deserve her. No man deserves a woman like that. He mortgages his very soul to win her and spends his life paying off the debt.”

— Tessa Dare

36. “Men never hesitated to declare their presence. They were permitted to live aloud, in reverberating thuds and clunks, while ladies were always schooled to abide in hushed whispers.”

— Tessa Dare

37. “Sometimes he wondered if women were all lawyers, with an extensive code of Romantic Law that they kept stubbornly hidden from men.”

— Tessa Dare

38. “To continue his existence on this earth, he now needed the following: food, water, shelter, clothing, and Minerva Highwood’s lips.”

— Tessa Dare

39. “Curse him, he was so good at this. He had her toes melting into the evening dew. Her knees felt close to dissolving, too. Soon she’d be reduced to ten thousand drops of Alexandra scattered across the green, desperately clinging to ten thousand blades of grass.”

— Tessa Dare

40. “Go on, then. Give it a pull.” Uncertainty drew his brows together. “What happens when I pull it?” “You don’t want to ruin the surprise.” “If the surprise is a spike through the chest, I do.”

— Tessa Dare

41. “I’m not interrogating him. I’m merely asking him questions.”

— Tessa Dare

42. “If you’ll only let me hold you, I won’t let you go.”

— Tessa Dare

43. “You’re not going to ruin my first kiss. I won’t let you. You’re going to kiss me again, right now. And make it better.”

— Tessa Dare

44. “Because your name should be on it. Because it’s damned tiresome being the one person alive who understands how truly remarkable you are.” He cupped her face in his hands, and not tenderly. “I won’t help you hide that from yourself, or from the world. Not anymore.”

— Tessa Dare

45. “I love you. I wish I had better ways to show it. All I have is this brash, reckless heart. But it’s yours.”

— Tessa Dare

46. “If anyone or anything frightens you, shout.” “Shout what?” He made an aimless gesture. “‘Help,’ I suppose. Or ‘Fire’ or ‘Murder.’ In a pinch, ‘James’ would suffice.” She nodded. “‘Come to me, you magnificent stag,’ it is.”

— Tessa Dare

47. “I love you. But I don’t want to be your reason for living. I want to share your life. There’s a difference between the two.”

— Tessa Dare

48. “Cleverness is like rouge – liberal application makes a woman look common and desperate. Wit is knowing how to apply it.”

— Tessa Dare

Featured in: Romance Quotes

49. “Rothbury stood over her. He was shirtless, wet, wild-haired. Handsome as sin and angry as Lucifer. A duke accustomed to having his way. Now she’d not only defied him, she’d directly challenged him. His words were low and even, but they smoldered like a fuse burning toward gunpowder. “I don’t need to prove anything to you.” He propped his hands on his hips. One of his pectoral muscles twitched angrily. As if registering an indignant harrumph.”

— Tessa Dare

50. “Is it truly so unfathomable, that an imperfect girl might be perfectly loved?”

— Tessa Dare