Max

“I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say. They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word. To-day, wrapped in the complacent armour of approaching middle age, the infinitesimal pricks of day by day brush one but lightly and are soon forgotten, but then--how a careless word would linger, becoming a fiery stigma, and how a look, a glance over a shoulder, branded themselves as things eternal. A denial heralded the thrice crowing of a cock, and an insincerity was like the kiss of Judas. The adult mind can lie with untroubled conscience and a gay composure, but in those days even a small deception scoured the tongue, lashing one against the stake itself.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“You’re a gentleman,” they used to say to him. “You shouldn’t have gone murdering people with a hatchet; that’s no occupation for a gentleman.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“My dinner party,' Miles grated. 'It's just breaking up.' And sinking. All souls feared lost.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

“I do think, half of what we call madness is just some poor slob dealing with pain by a strategy that annoys the people around him.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Mirror Dance