Galen Beckett Quotes

It is easy and amusing to make promises one knows one can never keep, but to offer an oath when one knows it must be obeyed - that is courage.

Once a fate cannot be avoided, however horrible it might be, it loses something of its powers of dread

It seems to me that sometimes-or perhaps I might venture most of the time-occurrences have no cause at all. New stars appear and old ones vanish. Short hats become popular again. Things are as they are and do as they please for absolutely no reason at all.

So she is pretty and he is rich. No doubt society will judge it an excellent match. I know my father does thus a woman he found intolerable for his son is in turn found ideal for his associate. strange isn't it how it's the direction we are viewed from that makes us attractive or abhorrent

She could not think of what had happened to her that day, or of what might happen that night. Instead, she watched the lamplighters move along the avenues even as their celestial counterparts set the stars alight in the sky. The rain had washed the city clean, and the air was a confection of clematis and violets and peony. Music and light spilled out of so many grand houses that the two seemed at once ubiquitous and united, as if to play a note was to send forth a ray of illumination, and a quartet was enough to set the grandest halls aglitter.

When twelve who wander stand as one
Through the door the dark will come.
The key will be revealed in turn
Unlock the way and you shall learn ...

It is an odd fact that certain words will leap at one out of a jumble of voices. Once such a thing is heard, the listener will naturally focus upon the conversation, and so hear everything that would have previously gone unnoticed.

The darkness is not so empty as you imagine. Think of attending a party at night, in a house brightly lit with candles. If we happen to glance out the window, we cannot see into the darkness or know what lies outside. Yet any out there in the dark can see inside to us.

Ever you retreat from others rather than risk discovering they hold you in poor esteem. Yet by that, you also fail to learn how often you are adored. When a man chooses to risk himself, Mr. Rafferdy, he may indeed have his fingers nipped. But he may reap great rewards as well.

Cannot a rugged and misty landscape be adored by the eyes as much as a sunlit garden? Perhaps it is adored even more for not seeking to make itself adorable.

A curious world isn't it? We think we meet people by chance when chance has nothing to do with it.

To understand a tree, one must study its roots.

One is always willfully absurd ... If one does not say silly things with a purpose, then he is merely an idiot.

How resilient was the body, to return to its prior form so quickly! Yet the mind was formed of a less pliable substance. The emptiness in her thoughts would not be so easily filled. Instead there was a hollowness among them-a place she had reserved for future joys which now would never arrive.

One only wants puzzles to be difficult after they're finished. That way one can feel proud of one's accomplishment. However, while we're in the act of doing them, it is preferred that they are easy.

Beer might make a smart man dull, but coffee is worse because it can delude a dull man into thinking he's smart.

To not hope, to expect nothing, to dismiss at every turn - these had been her only protection against certain devastation. Disappointment could not ensue when one failed to gain what one had never wished for.

Was it worth giving up anything in order to survive, no matter how precious it was? What if you gave up so much of yourself that there was nothing left of who you truly were.

I learned that sometimes you must be willing to lose something precious to you in order to escape and to endure - that no matter how unthinkable it might seem to make such sacrifice, all the same it must be done so that you may persist.

Like a necktie or a bouquet of flowers, an idea was best if one did not fuss with it too much

Sometimes a truth is so precious that it cannot be disowned.

An eye will tend to behold what its owner expects to see.