#is

... but that's the beauty of boarding school. I make all my own decisions, small and medium, while the big ones are left up to the Prefect Academy - and as far as boys go, to the only expert I know - Suzanne Santry ↗

— Adriana Trigiani

#boys #decisions #beauty

Can you say those words and not like it? Don't it bring to you a magnificent picture of the pristine world, - great seas and other skies, - a world of accentuated crises, that sloughed off age after age, and rose fresher from each plunge? Don't you see, or long to see, that mysterious magic tree out of whose pores oozed this fine solidified sunshine? What leaf did it have? What blossom? What great wind shivered its branches? Was it a giant on a lonely coast, or thick low growth blistered in ravines and dells? That's the witchery of amber, - that it has no cause, - that all the world grew to produce it, maybe, - died and gave no other sign, - that its tree, which must have been beautiful, dropped all its fruits, and how bursting with juice must they have been - ↗

— Harriet Prescott Spofford

#prehistoric #age

Then, when the stars came out, Ma took out her fiddle. We all quieted down while she tuned the strings, and I got the funniest feeling. I felt as if I was looking at everyone from far away in space, or maybe even in time. They all looked so beautiful sitting in the darkness of the woods under the stars. Their faces were pink and warm and happy in the firelight. I felt perfectly happy and perfectly sad all at the same time, and tears came into my eyes. ↗

— Kristin Kladstrup

#the-book-of-story-beginnings #beauty

When virtue and modesty enlighten her charms, the lustre of a beautiful woman is brighter than the stars of heaven, and the influence of her power it is in vain to resist. ↗

— Akhenaton

#beautiful #beautiful woman #brighter #charms #enlighten

in this case, a mother, noted for her beauty, might be reduced to a purple shadow... (Tansley to Lily on her painting of the house & grounds) ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#lily-briscoe #philosophy #beauty

Don't you remember anything?! There is no 'devil.' There is no 'hell.' There is only Unrest. There is no down, only sideways; the transparent beside the opaque, and a thin wall to separate them. ↗

— Leanna Renee Hieber

#spiritualism #the-devil #beauty

Israelis are a mix of North African, Levantine, and Eastern European, which inflames the politics but does amazing things for the women. ↗

— Kenneth Cain

#israelis #middle-east #politics #women #beauty

I'm in the back of a limousine with Charlie Chaplin and it’s 1928. Charlie is beautiful; his body language seems to skip, and reel and rhyme, heartbreaking and witty at the same time. It seems to promise a better world. ↗

— Geoff Ryman

#body-language #charlie-chaplin #history #memory #beauty

As he grew older, which was mostly in my absence, my firstborn son, Alexander, became ever more humorous and courageous. There came a time, as the confrontation with the enemies of our civilization became more acute, when he sent off various applications to enlist in the armed forces. I didn't want to be involved in this decision either way, especially since I was being regularly taunted for not having 'sent' any of my children to fight in the wars of resistance that I supported. (As if I could 'send' anybody, let alone a grown-up and tough and smart young man: what moral imbeciles the 'anti-war' people have become.) ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#civilisation #courage #enemies #fathers #humour

But the boredom of Frau Spatz had by now reached that pitch where it distorts the countenance of man, makes the eyes protrude from the head, and lends the features a corpselike and terrifying aspect. More than that, this music acted on the nerves that controlled her digestion, producing in her dyspeptic organism such malaise that she was really afraid she would have an attack. ↗

— Thomas Mann

#corpselike #malaise #music