25 Times Jace Herondale swept us off our feet in The Mortal Instruments Series

In Cassandra Clare‘s The Mortal Instruments series, Clary and Jace go to hell and back – literally. But the one thing that keeps them going and keeps them strong is their love for each other.

Through out the novels, these two have a very complicated love story – but we all know that the best things in life never come easy.

We all know Jace is a master of speeches, so here are 25 times when he made us swoon across the series.

1. “And now I’m looking at you,” he said, “and you’re asking me if I still want you, as if I could stop loving you. As if I would want to give up the thing that makes me stronger than anything else ever has. I never dared give much of myself to anyone before – bits of myself to the Lightwoods, to Isabelle and Alec, but it took years to do it – but, Clary, since the first time I saw you, I have belonged to you completely. I still do. If you want me.” 
— City of Glass

2. Jace was kissing her like he thought he might go to hell for doing it, but it would be worth it.
— City of Fallen Angels

3. His eyes softened. “But it doesn’t change what we are to each other. It’s like there’s always been a piece of my soul missing, and it’s inside you, Clary. I know I told you once that whether God exists or not, we’re on our own. But when I’m with you, I’m not.” 
— City of Lost Souls

4. “This could be the last night of our lives, certainly the last even barely ordinary one. The last night we go to sleep and get up just as we always have. And all I could think of was that I wanted to spend it with you.” 
— City of Glass

5. “And then there was you. You changed everything I believed in. You know that line from Dante that I quoted to you in the park? ‘L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle’?”
Her lips curled a little at the sides as she looked up at him. “I still don’t speak Italian.”
“It’s a bit of the very last verse from Paradiso – Dante’s Paradise. ‘My will and my desire were turned by love, the love that moves the sun and the other stars.’ Dante was trying to explain faith, I think, as an overpowering love, and maybe it’s blasphemous, but that’s how I think of the way I love you. You came into my life and suddenly I had one truth to hold on to – that I loved you, and you loved me.” 
— City of Fallen Angels

6. “I swear on the Angel.” He ducked his head down, kissed her cheek. “The hell with that. I swear on us.”
Clary wound her fingers into the sleeve of his T-shirt. “Why us?”
“Because there isn’t anything I believe in more.” 
— City of Fallen Angels 

7. “If I kiss you all day every day for the rest of my life, it won’t be enough.”
— City of Lost Souls 

8. He understands why people hold hands: he’d always thought it was about possessiveness, saying This is mine. But it’s about maintaining contact. It is about speaking without words. It is about I want you with me and don’t go. 
— City of Bones

9. “And then we met you, and it was like he woke up. You couldn’t see it, because you’d never known him any different. But I saw it. Hodge saw it. Alec saw it -why do you think he hated you so much? It was like that form the second we met you. You thought it was amazing that you could see us, and it was, but what was amazing to me was that Jace could see you too.” 
— City of Glass

10. “I don’t care,” Clary said. “He’d do it for me. Tell me he wouldn’t. If I were missing-”
“He’d burn the whole world down till he could dig you out of the ashes. I know,” Alec said. 
— City of Lost Souls

11. “I kept getting pulled back here. I couldn’t stop walking, couldn’t stop thinking. About the first time I ever saw you, and how after I couldn’t forget you. I wanted to, but I couldn’t stop myself. I forced Hodge to let me be the one who came to find you and bring you back to the Institute. And even back then, in that stupid coffee shop, when I saw you with Simon, even then that felt wrong to me– I should have been the one sitting with you. The one who made you laugh like that. I couldn’t get rid of that feeling. That it should have been me. And the more I knew you, the more I felt it– it had never been like that for me before. I’d always wanted a girl and then gotten to know her and not wanted her anymore, but with you the feeling just got stronger and stronger until that night when you showed up at Renwick’s and I knew.”
— City of Glass

12. “Everything that happens to you matters to me.” 
— City of Fallen Angels 

13. “I don’t need protecting.”
“I knew you’d say that. But the thing is, sometimes you do. And sometimes I do. We’re meant to protect each other, but not from everything. Not from the truth. That’s what it means to love someone but let them be themselves.”
— City of Lost Souls

14. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Neither does this,” he said, “but I don’t care. I’m sick of trying to pretend I can live without you. Don’t you understand that? Can’t you see it’s killing me?” 
— City of Fallen Angels 

15. He wants her in his bedroom. And not in that way — no girl has ever been in his bedroom that way. It is his private space, his sanctuary. But he wants Clary there. He wants her to see him, the reality of him, not the image he shows the world. He wants to lie down on the bed with her and have her curl into him. He wants to hold her as she breathes softly through the night; to see her as no one else sees her: vulnerable and asleep. To see her and to be seen.
— City of Bones

16. “Do you remember,” he said, “when we first met and I told you I was ninety percent sure putting a rune on you wouldn’t kill you—and you slapped me in the face and told me it was for the other ten percent?” Clary nodded.
“I always figured a demon would kill me,” he said. “A rogue Downworlder. A battle. But I realised then that I just might die if I didn’t get to kiss you, and soon.” 
— City of Lost Souls

17. “Every time I think I’m missing a piece of me, you give it back.”
— City of Heavenly Fire

18. “I’m just saying that I think I chose to act the way I did in part because of you. Since I’ve met you, everything I’ve done has been in part because of you. I can’t untie myself from you, Clary — not my heart or my blood or my mind or any other part of me. And I don’t want to.” 
— City of Glass

19. “His fingers skimmed down her body, over skin and satin, and she shivered, leaning into him, and she was sure they both tasted like blood and ashes and salt, but it didn’t matter; the world, the city, and all it’s lights and life seemed to have narrowed down to this, just her and Jace, the burning heart of a frozen world.”
— City of Fallen Angels

20. “I know it’s wrong – God, it’s all kinds of wrong – but I just want to lie down with you and wake up with you, just once, just once ever in my life.”  
— City of Glass

21. “I don’t know who I am. I look at myself and I see Stephen Herondale, but I act like a Lightwood and talk like my father – like Valentine. So I see who I am in your eyes, and I try to be that person, because you have faith in that person and I think faith might be enough to make me what you want.”
— City of Fallen Angels 

22. “There is no pretending,” Jace said with absolute clarity. “I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there’s a life after that, I’ll love you then.”
She caught her breath. He had said it — the words there was no going back from.
— City of Glass

23. “You’ve changed me for the better, and even if you left me, I would still have that.” He paused. “Not that you should leave me,” he added hastily.
— City of Heavenly Fire

24. “I swear, I almost died back there on that ship, you know.”
He let her hand go, but he was staring at her, almost as if he meant to memorise her face. “I know,” he said. “Everytime you almost die, I almost die myself.” 
— City of Ashes

25. She thought of the way Jace had looked at her then, the blaze of faith in his eyes, his belief in her. He had always thought she was strong. He had showed it in everything he did, in every look and every touch. Simon had faith in her too, yet when he’d held her, it had been as if she were something fragile, something made of delicate glass. But Jace had held her with all the strength he had, never wondering if she could take it–he’d known she was as strong has he was.
— City of Glass