whatcharlottereads

being young is a kind of warfare in which the great enemy is experience. - Andrew O'Hagan, Mayflies

"Do you know - I hardly remembered you?" "Hardly remembered me?" "I mean: how shall I explain? I - it's always so. Each time you happen to me all over again." - Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

He would have set the world on fire and then let it all burn just to keep holding her like this. - Stephanie Garber, A Curse For True Love

"If you are ever in doubt, just remember that unlike adults, children want to be happy. So they still have the ability to take the greatest pleasure in the simplest things." - Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

And there, as the sun begins to rise, he is overcome with thoughts of affirmation, a proclamation, a promise - a promise to shine everywhere and always to the very depths of the last days - which, after all, is all that anyone has ever asked of love. - Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

an educated man should admire any course of study no mater how arcane, if it be pursued with curiosity and devotion. - Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

"A king fortifies himself with a castle," observed the Count, "a gentleman with a desk." - Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

And she had style and money and common-sense and self-assurance and all the things that he didn't, and she had opened her heart, and if you let her she could engulf you; the woman was a city. - Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards

There are many horrible sights in the multiverse. Somehow, though, to a soul attuned to the subtle rhythms of a library, there are few worse sights than a hole where a book ought to be. - Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

Realise at long last that you have within you something stronger and more numinous than those agents of emotion which make you a mere puppet on their strings. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Calculated honesty is a stiletto. There is nothing more degrading than the friendship of wolves: avoid that above all. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

No more roundabout discussion of what makes a good man. Be one! - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

How worthless are these little men in the public eye who think their actions have anything to do with philosophy! They are full of snot. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

I have no cause to hurt myself: I have never consciously hurt anyone else. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Do not let the future trouble you. You will come to it (if that is what you must) possessed of the same reason that you apply now to the present. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

When circumstances force you to some sort of distress, quickly return to yourself. Do not stay out of rhythm for longer than you must: you will master the harmony the more by constantly going back to it. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations