Rueful Smile Quotes & Sayings

When others in doubt, your strong belief steers. — Toba Beta

I do not understand people who do not read. What are they doing in their free times? — Jamie Dornan

Mia, stop!" My voice bounces off her bedroom walls. "We are not in high school anymore!"

She looks at me, a question hanging in the air.

"Look, my tour doesn't start for another week."

A feather of hope starts to float across the space between us.

"And you know, I was thinking I was craving some sushi."

Her smile is sad and rueful, not exactly what I was going for. "You'd come to Japan with me?"

"I'm already there. — Gayle Forman

What were you thinking about just
now while you were looking out the window?" To his surprise, the question flustered her.
"I - wasn't thinking."
"Then what were you doing?" he asked, his curiosity aroused.
A rueful smile touched her inviting lips, and she shot him a sideways look before turning back to the
window. "I was ... talking to God," she admitted. "'Tis a habit I have."
Startled and slightly amused, Royce said, "Really? What did God have to say?"
"I think," she softly replied, "He said, 'You're welcome.' "
"For what?" Royce teased.
Lifting her eyes to his, Jenny solemnly replied, "For you. — Judith McNaught

What?" I asked uneasily. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
He shook his head, the smile rueful now. "Because sometimes, a person can get so caught up in the details that they miss the whole. It's not just the dress or the hair. It's YOU. You're beautiful. So beautiful, it hurts me. — Richelle Mead

Love was over, and her man was sleeping beside her. Her man. She smiled a little in the darkness, his seed still trickling with slow warmth from between her slightly parted thighs, and her smile was both rueful and pleased, because the phrase her man summoned up a hundred feelings. Each feeling examined alone was a bewilderment. Together, in this darkness floating to sleep, they were like a distant blues tune heard in an almost deserted nightclub, melancholy but pleasing. — Stephen King

"I tried, once," said Bernard, with a rueful smile. "Yup! I tried." He gazed thoughtfully out the window. — Carey Rockwell

Composers are always going back to the past. — Anne Dudley

After an extensive interview he arranged for my weaknesses in foreign languages to be over-looked and so I started a Biology degree at Birmingham in 1967. — Paul Nurse

Swallowing back her bitterness, Amelia glanced up at her brother and managed a rueful smile. "Thank you, but at this advanced stage of life, I have no ambitions to marry."
Leo surprised her by bending to brush a light kiss on her forehead. His voice was soft and kind. "Be that as it may, I think someday you'll meet a man worth giving up your independence for." He grinned before adding, "Despite your encroaching old age. — Lisa Kleypas

Where will you go?" "To the safest place in London," he says with a rueful smile. "A place that loved your husband and will never forgive Duke Richard for betraying him. The only honest business in London." "Where d'you mean?" "The whorehouse," he says with a grin. — Philippa Gregory

If someone had asked him about his dreams on the morning of the barbecue, he would have said that he didn't want for much, but he wouldn't mind a lower mortgage, a tidier house, another baby - ideally a son, but he'd take another girl no problem at all - a big motherfucking boat if it were up for grabs, and more sex. He would have laughed about the sex. Or smiled at least. A rueful smile. Maybe the smile would have been exactly halfway between rueful and bitter. — Liane Moriarty

A blank isn't the same. He remembered holding the book, feeling the history of the leather cover someone had tanned and stretched and cut to fit. The paper that someone had laboriously filled by hand and sewn into the binding. Years, heavy on the pages. Morgan had been reading a copy of it. An original. It felt like the old monk's story was part of his own.
But when he read it in the blank, it was just words, and it had no power to carry him away. — Rachel Caine

Abe's face came back into focus. "Greetings, Zmey," I said weakly. Somehow, him being here didn't surprise me. "Nice of you to slither on in." He shook his head, wearing a rueful smile.
"I think you've outdone me when it comes to sneaking around dark corners. I thought you were on your way back to Montana."
"Next time, make sure you write a few more details into your bargains. Or just pack me up and send me back to the U. S. For real."
"Oh," he said, "that's exactly what I intend to do."
He kept smiling as he said it, but somehow, I had a feeling he wasn't joking. — Richelle Mead

She gave Cooper a quick nod, indicating she was going out the back, and didn't wait around to see if he understood her meaning. She pushed through the swinging doors to the small kitchen in the back, snagged the keys to her truck from the hook, and replaced them with her apron. She gave a quick glance to the grill, making sure Sandy hadn't left anything to burn on it when he'd been pulled out front, but everything looked in order. Stop stalling.
She sighed, shook her head, but the rueful smile that accompanied the movement was fleeting. For what might be the first time in her life, she had absolutely no idea how she was going to handle what came next.
"Only one way to find out," she murmured. Tightening her grip on her keys, if not her emotions, she let herself out the back door of the pub and found herself staring straight up into the crystalline blue eyes of Cooper Jax. — Donna Kauffman

The reason that conservative talk radio works is because there is an audience for it. — Paul Weyrich

What name did you give them when you registered us?" Bonnie asked. She was turned around in her seat, watching to see if they were going to be pursued. So far so good.
"Parker Barrow."
Bonnie laughed and groaned. "And you thought that was a good idea?"
"No. I just thought it was funny. And at this point, funny is about all we've got," Finn said with a rueful smile.
"We really aren't anything like Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow."
"I've decided that the media doesn't care, Bonnie Rae. They want us to be . . . and so that's the story they'll tell. — Amy Harmon

Marylou was watching Dean as she had watched him clear across the country and back, out of the corner of her eye
with a sullen, sad air, as though she wanted to cut off his head and hide it in her closet, an envious and rueful love of him so amazingly himself, all raging and sniffy and crazy-wayed, a smile of tender dotage but also sinister envy that frightened me about her, a love she knew would never bear fruit because when she looked at his hangjawed bony face with its male self-containment and absentmindedness she knew he was too mad. — Jack Kerouac

Aren't we all alone?" I asked with a rueful smile.
"Yes. I think in the end, we all are, no matter what the songs and happy stories say. I guess it's just a matter of who we choose to be alone with."
"That's why I come here, you know. To be alone with other people. There's isolation in a crowd. You're hidden. Safe. — Richelle Mead

He lowered his head and shook it from side to side, giving her a rueful smile. "I find it so ironic that someone I think of as sometimes so brave to the point of stupidity could be so terrified of her own happiness,"
Bree felt the shot hit home, and she couldn't look at him. She ran her finger along the marble topped of the island. "That's ridiculous. Who in their right mind is afraid of being happy?"
"Someone who has lost too much," he moved slowly towards her in gentle careful strides as if he was afraid of startling her.
Fair enough, she did tend to attack him when he tried to corner her, but for some reason, Bree just couldn't tonight. The much too relaxing bubble bath must be making her sluggish.
"Someone who is so used to being told she caused too much pain to others to ever be worthy of happiness herself,"
Bree closed her eyes. "Shut up. Please, Alessandro. — E. Jamie

Clem rubbed at her face with her cuff and gave a quick, rueful smile. 'It's just so sad. It's the umpteenth time I've read it, and I will always think it will have a different ending. But it never does. — Anna Hope

You must bow on your knees at all times before the ruling-class norms to show you are submissive. — Bryant McGill

Nicholas felt a rueful smile spread across his face. And a curse be on him for it, because now he knew her. She'd shown him her mind, and she'd opened up her heart, and now he knew the taste of her tears. And he was wrecked. — Alexandra Bracken

I see. So you playacted the role of a rake who was only pretending to be in earnest, knowing you would come across as though you had the lowest of motives, when in fact, you were sincere?"
"Precisely."
She gave a short, wry laugh and shook her head at him. "Convoluted sir! You are a maze."
He shot her a sulky glance. "I thought you were going to say I was amazing."
"That, too," she admitted with a rueful smile, capturing his square chin between her fingertips. — Gaelen Foley

Then the rest of my men and I will make a run for the train tracks." "Not without me guiding you, you're not," Novak said. "Obviously. The jokes about the most dangerous thing in the military being a lieutenant with a map exist for a reason." Cleasby — Larry Correia

I hope my visual language inspires others to tell their stories and challenges people's thinking. — Aurora Guerrero

He gave me a rueful smile, his brown eyes so endearing. I could tell he was about to say something funny. I just knew him that well. That's like asking if I'm a fan of cancer. I fucking hate it, but do I know how to get rid of it? Not fucking likely. — R.K. Lilley

It is a cliche these days to observe that the United States now possesses a global empire - different from Britain's and Rome's but an empire nonetheless. — Robert D. Kaplan

No guts, no glory. — Laurence Yep

When I came to California, it was the mecca of the world. Every young person on the planet wanted to be here. — Joni Mitchell

There is nothing bigger or older than the universe. — Stephen Hawking

You're a hard man to love, Lachlan MacRuairi, but I do belive I'm up to the challenge."
"We'll probably argue."
"Aye, it seems likely."
"I have a bit of a temper when I get angry."
"I have noticed," she said wryly.
"I can be a mean bastard. I"ll probably say something to hurt you."
She laughed. "Are you trying to scare me off?"
He gave her a rueful smile. " Maybe."
"Well, stop - it isn't going to work. I'm quite aware of your faults."
He frowned. "I didn't say they were faults. — Monica McCarty

I love you, Callie. The war is over, but" - He smiled, a crooked, rueful, tender smile - "my life is just beginning," he told her. — Heather Graham

We are not fond of praising, and never praise any one except from interested motives. Praise is a clever, concealed, and delicate flattery, which gratifies in different ways the giver and the receiver. The one takes it as a recompense of his merit, and the other bestows it to display his equity and discernment. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

I am a sassenach, after all," I said, seeing it. He touched my face briefly with a rueful smile. "Aye, mo duinne. But you're my sassenach. — Diana Gabaldon

These are facts that would make every American upset. Our birthright is being stolen, the legacy of our country is at stake, and the values of our nation are in peril. The future whispers, and the present shouts. — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Papa wants you to marry some decrepit old wigsby?" She gave him a charmingly rueful smile, all tousled golden curls like some angel who had rolled off a cloud in her sleep, he thought, and had fallen to earth with a thud. "Something like that," she said in vague amusement. "I see. Well, surely we can find a solution." He snapped his fingers and gave her a grin. "Shall I ruin you? That should solve your problem. The old wigsby won't want you if you're used goods, and I assure you, I'd be happy to oblige. — Gaelen Foley

Stephen can, of course, use my power, for two reasons. Firstly, because it's his, just as all I am and all I have are his. Not that he ever asks, of course. I'm not sure that he quite believes it." He looked round at Stephen, a rueful smile dawning, ignoring Fairley's loud noises of disgust. "But I do hope you are aware, my sweet, somewhere in that absurd heart, that I am ever, entirely, and quite pathetically yours. — K.J. Charles

He expects me turn up for the inspection, glance through all of this, and then scurry back to Ohnlei to get on with my life. Marcus gave a rueful smile. More fool him. He doesn't know I haven't got a life. — Django Wexler

I leaned back in my chair, stretching luxuriantly, delibrately letting my jacket fall open. Predictably, his eyes moved down my body-some things outlast even the change. I grinned and he looked away, a rueful smile twitching at his lips. I finished breakfast in peace. — Karen Chance

When I entered and shut the door, the Darkling gave me a small bow. "How are you, Alina?"
"I'm fine," I managed.
"She's fine!" hooted Baghra. "She's fine! She cannot light a hallway, but she's fine."
I winced and wished I could disappear into my boots.
To my surprise, the Darkling said, "Leave her be."
Baghra's eyes narrowed. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
The Darkling sighed and ran his hands through his dark hair in exasperation. When he looked at me, there was a rueful smile on his lips, and his hair was going every which way. "Baghra has her own way of doing things," he said.
"Don't patronize me, boy!" Her voice cracked out like a whip. To my amazement, I saw the Darkling stand up straighter and then scowl as if he'd caught himself.
"Don't chide me, old woman," he said in a low, dangerous voice. — Leigh Bardugo