Five Quotes, vol. xxii

 

The Little Apple Bookshop, York, England

Three out of five quotations this week are from Amor Towles' masterpiece, A Gentleman in Moscow.  This was my favorite book of 2019, and I recently picked it up to re-read it.  But after hearing me sing its praises my husband picked it up and understood its genius and delight, and that made me so happy...except then I had to find another book to read.  

"Why do bookstores always make you do uncomfortable things with your neck?"

- Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, Robin Sloane

"He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight."

- The Art of War, Sun Tzu

"By broadening your horizons," he ventured, "what I meant is that education will give you a sense of the world's scope, of its wonders, of its many and varied ways of life."

"Wouldn't travel achieve that more effectively?"

"Travel?"

"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?"

- A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles

"For after all, if attentiveness should be measured in minutes and discipline measured in hours, then indomitability must be measured in years.  Or, if philosophical investigations are not to your taste, then let us simply agree that the wise man celebrates what he can."

- A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles

"After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we've just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel?  For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone?  Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli.  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."

- A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles