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Kindle Notes & Highlights
there’s equal—in the sense of human potential and dreams and the rule of law—and then there’s equal. As in, who are your people, my dear?
wealth will always divide people
“It can be difficult sometimes for our families to accept us as people separate from who they are. As separate souls. When we’re young, we’re taught to behave as our parents do—to cherish what they cherish and believe what they believe. And for a while, that’s as it should be. But as adults, sometimes we have our own desires, our own hopes, that are at odds with how our parents view the world.”
There are certain people in this world who have the ability to make you feel as if you’re the only person in the universe who matters to them. Whether it’s moment by moment or enough years to count up to a lifetime, they look you in the eyes and smile at you, direct and sincere—and you’re smitten.
“I’ve always thought the best way to get the measure of a man is to observe how he treats his animals.”
💯 yes! how a man treats animals and public servants/service industry workers is the best tell of his true peraonality!
If you dance in the limelight, it’s only natural that people will look at you. You can’t expect otherwise.”
that's the truth for sure!
love is a tremendous gift, Maddy. A gift and a burden. Marriage especially is more than just hope and luck and a handshake. Marriage is work, enormous work, because it’s a living entity that needs everlasting attention. It will push you and bend you and test you, and if you’re not prepared for any of that, it will shatter you.
the best advice you give anyone getting married....
“Being in love makes all that work easier, but it does not make it go away. There will be necessary sacrifices. There will be pain. So I’ll ask you again: Do you think you’re in love with him?”
“I would not have the world be cruel to you,” she emphasized. “I would not have Vincent Astor be cruel to you. But if—when—those things happen, I would not have you be cruel in return. Kinder hearts are stronger, I think.”
“It’s plain as day Jack adores you. I think he adores you to the point that the thought of being without you terrifies him to the core. And for a man like Jack Astor, that is significant.”
love and common sense don’t always go hand in hand.”
If one breaks the horror apart, breaks it into all these little, smaller moments, perhaps it’s possible to reconstruct it in such a way as to make everything more . . . manageable. At any rate, it’s a better way to carry on than turning to laudanum.
trauma is trauma.....and trying to work through it rather than medicate and avoid it is always healthier
Kinder hearts are stronger, her mother had once said. Maddy needed to be strong.
it takes more strength to be kind to those who have not been kind to you then it does to treat them just as awfully
The nature of hope is curious to me. It can sustain us through the darkest of times. It can buoy us above every reasonable expectation of despair. Yet hope can shatter us just as readily as the darkness can. People refer to it as false hope, but I think that’s misleading, because the feeling itself is painfully true.
