“Oh, the unintended consequences of perfidy!”
“Oh, the unintended consequences of perfidy!”
“Oh, the unintended consequences of perfidy!”
“There is no such thing as unrequited love; the phrase ought to be stricken from the lexicon. Love is a thing shared, an intertwining of essential separateness into something not quite alone. There is nothing like it under the heavens. Like bread, it will not be made with flour or water alone; the recipe requires both. Guarding each other’s vulnerability provides the yeast that makes it rise, and salt from the tears that caring brings lends the finishing touch.”
“I advise, however, moderation in this task of setting goals, or else risk becoming tangled up in a Gordian knot of life’s many disappointments.”
“It is we who move through time, not the reverse. When we walk beyond any one of life’s instants, it becomes nothing more than a receding milestone. We can look back, but we cannot retrace our steps. The past remains stationary, while we are doomed to move ever onwards. To do otherwise is against nature.”
“Some men simply refuse to appear insulted. But then, having felt the sting from the slap on their cheek, know just where to slip the knife, their smile never fading.”
“It is laughable how often good manners interfere with my survival.”
“It is a terrible thing to witness death by violence, a thousand times worse to hold a man’s life in your own hands and to willingly, consciously take it from him. Acknowledged or not, something noble has been scoured from your insides, never to be replaced. You saved a friend’s life, and there lies ample justification. But never peace, never balance, never the same. At least that is how it seems to me.”
“Yes, I have a romantic nature; it is a character flaw which should be viewed with pity, not derision.”
“Pride costs nothing, yet it is especially precious when it can be “purchased” at someone else’s expense.”
“I think about that centurion from time to time and wonder, had he retired to a farm in Campagna, happy with his harvest of grapes and grandchildren, or had he fallen amongst his comrades on some distant, ruined field, defending the honor and the ever-expanding borders of the Republic? What we foreigners have failed to comprehend over the centuries is that the proud centurion would have found either fate equally satisfying. This is why Rome grows, and the rest of the world shrinks.”
“I don’t care how smart you are. You’ll never understand how little you really know until you’ve had a woman.”
“Ignorance is an underrated virtue, my lord.”