A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

why on earth would you give him the satisfaction?”

This efficiency of design was music to the young mind.

that adversity presents itself in many forms; and that if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.

in the shapeless moments before the return to consciousness

But imagining what might happen if one’s circumstances were different was the only sure route to madness.

By Diverse Means We Arrive at the Same End

If he continued along this course, it would not take long for the ceiling to edge downward, the walls to edge inward, and the floor to edge upward, until the entire hotel had been collapsed into the size of a biscuit tin.

by 1900 it had tiptoed down the stairs of reason, until they were being fought over the tilt of a hat, the duration of a glance, or the placement of a comma.

For pomp is a tenacious force. And a wily one too.

but soon enough trumpets will blare and pomp will take its place at the side of the throne, having once again secured its dominion over history and kings.

“If only I were there and she were here,” she sighed. And there, thought the Count, was a suitable plaint for all mankind.

but a moment in the daily life of a gentleman at liberty.

For if a room that exists under the governance, authority, and intent of others seems smaller than it is, then a room that exists in secret can, regardless of its dimensions, seem as vast as one cares to imagine.

“It is the business of the times to change, Mr. Halecki. And it is the business of gentlemen to change with them.”

But Fate would not have the reputation it has if it simply did what it seemed it would do.

From bells to cannons and back again, from now until the end of time. Such is the fate of iron ore.

“But I should think the best-bred dogs belong in the surest hands.”

By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.

that realm of averages and unknowns.

Popular upheaval, political turmoil, industrial progress—any combination of these can cause the evolution of a society to leapfrog generations, sweeping aside aspects of the past that might otherwise have lingered for decades. And this must be especially so, when those with newfound power are men who distrust any form of hesitation or nuance, and who prize self-assurance above all.

Because the Bolsheviks, who were so intent upon recasting the future from a mold of their own making, would not rest until every last vestige of his Russia had been uprooted, shattered, or erased.

It is a fact of human life that one must eventually choose a philosophy.

each system quite sensible, no doubt, when one had finally arrived at the one-thousandth page.

any young man with more influence than experience could now don the white jacket, clear from the left, and pour wine into water glasses.

And even if she is single-minded to a fault, you must trust that life will find her in time. For eventually, it finds us all.”

They remain committed to living among their peers, but they greet adulation with caution, ambition with sympathy, and condescension with an inward smile.

But as the day unfolded, hour by hour Emile’s pessimism would slowly give way to the possibility that all was not lost.

waste not want not; neither a borrower nor a lender be.

“Ah, yes. Well. Life has been generous to me in its variety.”

“As both a student of history and a man devoted to living in the present, I admit that I do not spend a lot of time imagining how things might otherwise have been. But I do like to think there is a difference between being resigned to a situation and reconciled to it.”

They spoke of the once and the was, of the wishful and the wonderful.

feeling that this moment, this hour, this universe could not be improved upon.

(After all, isn’t that why the pages of books are numbered? To facilitate the finding of one’s place after a reasonable interruption?)

(never mind that no acquaintance since Adam had returned a book or an umbrella).

Without his even noticing—without his acknowledgment, input, or permission—routine had established itself within his daily life.

“Who would have imagined,” he said, “when you were sentenced to life in the Metropol all those years ago, that you had just become the luckiest man in all of Russia.”

Because when Fate hands something down to posterity, it does so behind its back.”

For all the varied concerns attendant to the raising of a child—over schoolwork, dress, and manners—in the end, a parent’s responsibility could not be more simple: To bring a child safely into adulthood so that she could have a chance to experience a life of purpose and, God willing, contentment.

Now, though, he worried that this carefully preserved room had begun to sustain rather than alleviate their grief;

“I suppose a room is the summation of all that has happened inside it.”

To some degree, this was because they were kindred spirits—finding ample evidence of common ground and cause for laughter in the midst of effortless conversation; but it was also almost certainly a matter of upbringing. Raised in grand homes in cosmopolitan cities, educated in the liberal arts, graced with idle hours, and exposed to the finest things, though the Count and the American had been born ten years and four thousand miles apart, they had more in common with each other than they had with the majority of their own countrymen.

“She thinks it’s because you like to keep your buttons in their boxes.”

For what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim.”

but at the age of sixty-four he was wise enough to know that life does not proceed by leaps and bounds. It unfolds. At any given moment, it is the manifestation of a thousand transitions. Our faculties wax and wane, our experiences accumulate, and our opinions evolve—if not glacially, then at least gradually. Such that the events of an average day are as likely to transform who we are as a pinch of pepper is to transform a stew.

The first was that if one did not master one’s circumstances, one was bound to be mastered by them; and the second was Montaigne’s maxim that the surest sign of wisdom is constant cheerfulness.