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love this
Was the minding of one’s own business no longer a subject taught in schools?
lollllll
“The principle here is that a new generation owes a measure of thanks to every member of the previous generation. Our elders planted fields and fought in wars; they advanced the arts and sciences, and generally made sacrifices on our behalf. So by their efforts, however humble, they have earned a measure of our gratitude and respect.”
“The only difference between everybody and nobody is all the shoes.”
“We are talking about horizons, aren’t we? That horizontal line at the limit of sight? Rather than sitting in orderly rows in a schoolhouse, wouldn’t one be better served by working her way toward an actual horizon, so that she could see what lay beyond it?
There's no way she's nine years old. Are nine year old's this smart or do I live under a rock?
But had the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come suddenly appeared and roused the Count to give him a glimpse of the future, he would have seen that his sense of well-being had been premature. For less than four years later, after another careful accounting of the twice-tolling clock’s twelve chimes, Alexander Ilyich Rostov would be climbing to the roof of the Metropol Hotel in his finest jacket and gamely approaching its parapet in order to throw himself into the street below.
WHAT
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.
For what is more versatile? As at home in tin as it is in Limoges, coffee can energize the industrious at dawn, calm the reflective at noon, or raise the spirits of the beleaguered in the middle of the night.
“The secret is in the grinding.” He pointed to a little wooden apparatus with an iron crank. “Not a minute before you brew.”
me trying to explain to my friends the intricacies of making coffee
If patience wasn’t so easily tested, then it would hardly be a virtue. . . .
The two men stared at each other.
fighting words
And in that venue I suppose a certain lack of experience is to be tolerated, or even expected.
BET
And if the sight of snow hadn’t prompted the footmen to build the fires so high, you might not have ended up on the terrace in the arms of the birthday girl—as a young Hussar returned his supper to the pasture from whence it came.
lol
Thus, in the ballroom of the Metropol Hotel on the twenty-first of June 1926, was the heretic, Galileo of Galilei, vindicated by a ping, a splat, a smash, a thunk, a thump, and a thud.
oh galileo
“And but for Tchaikovsky, it would have remained in Prussia.”
adding these to my vocabulary of ruffians, scamps, tomfooleryers, shenaniganners, and hooliganners
so demure
You have read Anna Karenina at least ten times, but I’d wager you still cry when she throws herself under the train.”
UM SPOILER ALERT
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.”
“Nothing has gotten my goat. My goat is not gotten.”
his goat is not gotten guys
the surest sign of wisdom is constant cheerfulness.
He had said that our lives are steered by uncertainties, many of which are disruptive or even daunting; but that if we persevere and remain generous of heart, we may be granted a moment of supreme lucidity—a moment in which all that has happened to us suddenly comes into focus as a necessary course of events, even as we find ourselves on the threshold of a bold new life that we had been meant to lead all along.
