Jacqueline Winspear > Quotes

“Grace isn't a little prayer you chant before receiving a meal. It's a way to live.”
― Jacqueline Winspear

“I'll tell you this. Leaving that which you love breaks your heart open. But you will find a jewel inside, and this precious jewel is the opening of your heart to all that is new and all that is different, and it will be the making of you-if you allow it to be.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Leaving Everything Most Loved

“Coincidence is a messenger sent by truth.”
― Jacqueline Winspear

“Truth walks toward us on the paths of our questions...as soon as you think you have the answer, you have closed the path and may miss vital new information. Wait awhile in the stillness, and do not rush to conclusions, no matter how uncomfortable the unknowing.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Maisie Dobbs

“Shame, isn’t it? That we only like our heroes out in the street when they are looking their best and their uniforms are ‘spit and polished,’ and not when they’re showing us the wounds they suffered on our behalf.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Maisie Dobbs

“Memories are links in a golden chain that bind us until we meet again.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Maisie Dobbs

“The extraordinary hides behind the camouflage of the ordinary. Assume nothing, Maisie.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Maisie Dobbs

“Coincidence is a messenger sent by the truth." [Dr. Maurice Blanche]”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Maisie Dobbs

“There is nothing of which every man is so afraid, as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Maisie Dobbs

“My child, when a mountain appears on the journey, we try to go to the left, then to the right. We try to find the easy way to navigate our way back to the easier path.…. But the mountain is there to be crossed. It is on that pilgrimage, as we climb higher, that we are forced to shed the layers upon layers we have carried for so long. Then we find that our load is lighter, and we have come to know something of ourselves in the perilous climb…..Do not seek to avoid the mountain, my child. For it has been placed there at a perfect time. It will only become larger if you seek to delay or draw back from the ascent. ”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Pardonable Lies

“Wolfgang von Goethe:"A man can stand anything, except a succession of ordinary days.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, A Lesson in Secrets

“And it occurred to her that she was so used to turning over everything in her mind, as if each thought were an intricate shell found at the beach, that she had never truly known the value of simply accepting things as they were.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Elegy for Eddie

“She would not allow someone for whom she had so little regard to have a negative effect on her mood at the start of a new week. -Pardonable Lies”
― Jacqueline Winspear

“Never judge a journey by the distance...”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Birds of a Feather

“Thus a day that had seen so many tears ended in the midst of a rainbow.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Maisie Dobbs

“Though there had yet to be a victor in this great war that had begun almost three years ago, Maurice had written to her that they had, all of them, on all sides, lost their freedom. Freedom to think hopefully of the future.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Maisie Dobbs

“. . . if the way ahead is not clear, time is often the best editor of one's intentions.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, The Mapping of Love and Death

“Truth walks towards us on the paths of our questions." [Dr. Maurice Blanche]”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Maisie Dobbs

“Stay with the question. The more it troubles you, the more it has to teach you. In time, Maisie, you will find that the larger questions in life share such behavior.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Maisie Dobbs

“And there's a thin line between genius and insanity, isn't there?”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“I've come to the conclusion that liking a person we are required to have dealings with is not of paramount importance. But respect is crucial, on both sides, as is tolerance, and a depth of understanding of those influences that sculpt a character.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Messenger of Truth

“I’m not really interested in the black and white, the 'goodies and baddies.' I find the complexity of the gray areas more compelling, more intriguing. As I have said before, there are angels and demons in all of us, and I am interested in the relationship between the two within the ‘ordinary’ person.”
― Jacqueline Winspear

“Wisdom comes when we acknowledge what we can never know.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Birds of a Feather

“Grief is not an event, my dear, but a passage, a pilgrimage along a path that allows us to reflect upon the past from points of remembrance held in the soul. At times the way is filled with stones underfoot and we feel pained by our memories, yet on other days the shadows reflect our longing and those happinesses shared.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Messenger of Truth

“She closed her eyes, silently continuing the pleas that she be given words that might soothe, words that would begin the healing of bereaved parents. She had seen, when she entered the kitchen, the chasm of sorrow that divided man and wife already, each deep in their own wretched suffering, neither knowing what to say to the other. She knew that to begin to talk about what had happened was a key to acknowledging their loss, and that such acceptance would in turn be a means to enduring the days and months ahead.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Messenger of Truth

“It's because it's the beginning, and also the end. That was what she loved about the place where the water met the land. A promise of something fresh, a suggestion that even if what is happening now is to be suffered, there is an end and a beginning.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Messenger of Truth

“The feeling inside that she experienced when she saw the books was akin to the hunger she felt as food was put on the table at the end of the working day. And she knew that she needed this sustenance as surely as her body needed its fuel.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Maisie Dobbs

“[Maisie] "Tell me, Dr. Dene, if you were to name one thing that made the difference between those who get well quickly and those who don't, what would it be?"

[Dr. Dene] "...In my opinion, acceptance has to come first. Some people don't accept what has happened. They think, 'Oh, if only I hadn't...' or... 'If only I'd known...' They are stuck at the point that caused the injury.

"...I would say that it's threefold: One is accepting what has happened. Three is having a picture, an indea of what they will do when they are better or improved. Then in the middle, number two is a path to follow.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Birds of a Feather

“War’s always the same though—politicians square off and ordinary lads do their dirty work.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, To Die but Once

“... the vacuum left by the departing visitor seemed to echo along the hallway and into the walls. It was at those times, when her aloneness took on a darker hue, that she almost wished there would be no more guess, for then there would be no chasm of emptiness for her to negotiate when they were gone.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, The Mapping of Love and Death