Pregando Amor Quotes

Events can unfold in such a manner that overnight the man out of step finds himself in the right place at the right time.... Then, like a lone sailor adrift for years on alien seas, he wakes one night to discover familiar constellations overhead. And when this occurs -- this extraordinary realignment of the stars -- the man so long out of step with his time experiences a supreme lucidity. Suddenly all that has passed comes into focus as a necessary course of events, and all that promises to unfold has the clearest rhyme and reason. ~ Amor Towles

Each city has its own romantic season. Once a year, a city's architectural, cultural and horticultural variables come into alignment with the solar course in such a way that men and women passing eachother in the thoroughfares few and unusual sense of romantic promise. Like Christmas time in Vienna, April in Paris and autumn in New York. ~ Amor Towles

It is a well-known fact that of all the species on earth Homo sapiens is among the most adaptable. Settle a tribe of them in a desert and they will wrap themselves in cotton, sleep in tents, and travel on the backs of camels; settle them in the Arctic and they will wrap themselves in sealskin, sleep in igloos, and travel by dog-drawn sled. And if you settle them in a Soviet climate? They will learn to make friendly conversation with strangers while waiting in line; they will learn to neatly stack their clothing in their half of the bureau drawer; and they will learn to draw imaginary buildings in their sketchbooks. That is, they will adapt. ~ Amor Towles

Knowing beauty, influence, fame, and privilege to be borrowed rather than bestowed, they are not easily impressed. They are not quick to envy or take offense. ~ Amor Towles

The principle here is that a new generation owes a measure of thanks to every member of the previous generation. Our ~ Amor Towles

was ten and eleven ~ Amor Towles

You don't 'find' love, mi amor. You choose it. And then to keep love, you must choose it again, day after day. ~ Patricia Engel

Invariably dressed in black, the Countess was one of those dowagers whose natural natural independence of mind, authority of age, and impatience with the petty made her the ally of all irreverent youth. ~ Amor Towles

I assure you, my dear, were you to play the piano on the moon, I would hear every chord. ~ Amor Towles

There has been significant debate in the scientific community about whether desire is a symptom of a system infected with amor deliria nervosa, or a pre-condition of the disease itself.
It is unanimously agreed, however, that love and desire enjoy a symbiotic relationship, meaning that one cannnot exist without the other. Desire is enemy to ncontentment; desire is illness, a feverish brain. Who can be considereed healthy who wants? The very word want suggests a lack, an impoverishment, and that is what desire is: an impoverishment of the brain, a flaw, a mistake. Fortunately, that can now be corrected.
- From The Roots and Repercussions of Amor Deliria Nervosa on Cognitive Functioning, 4th edition, by Dr. Phillip Berryman ~ Lauren Oliver

Heartmating hesitating unafraid ~ John Berryman

Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool. ~ Donna Tartt

Little closer, as if I hadn't quite heard him. I leaned at an angle five degrees less acute than the waitress had. - What's that? - I was wondering if there's a melody in there. - It just went out for a smoke. It'll be back in a minute. But I take it that you don't ~ Amor Towles

Ah me! Love can not be cured by herbs. ~ Ovid

- You see this apple? Sweet. Crisp. Ruby red. It wasn't always like that, you know. The first apples in America were mottled and too bitter to eat. But after generations of grafting, now they're all like this one. Most people think this is man's victory over nature. But it's not. In evolutionary terms, it's the apple's victory. ~ Amor Towles

After meeting someone by chance and throwing off a few sparks, can there be any substance to the feeling that you've known each other your whole lives? After those first few hours of conversation, can you really be sure that your connection is so uncommon that it belongs outside the bounds of time and convention? ~ Amor Towles

if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them. ~ Amor Towles

Amor fati: this is the very core of my being - And as to my prolonged illness, do I not owe much more to it than I owe to my health? To it I owe a higher kind of health, a sort of health which grows stronger under everything that does not actually kill it! - To it, I owe even my philosophy. ... Only great suffering is the ultimate emancipator of spirit, for it teaches one that vast suspiciousness which makes an X out of every U, a genuine and proper X, i.e., the antepenultimate letter. Only great suffering; that great suffering, under which we seem to be over a fire of greenwood, the suffering that takes its time - forces us philosophers to descend into our nethermost depths, and to let go of all trustfulness, all good-nature, all whittling-down, all mildness, all mediocrity, - on which things we had formerly staked our humanity. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The stamps on the envelope were English. One was the head of a statesman engraved in purple and the others were motorcars engraved in blue. It seemed like every country in the world had stamps of statesmen and motorcars. Where were the stamps of the elevator boys and hapless housewives? Of the six-story walk-ups and soured wine? ~ Amor Towles

But Fate would not have the reputation it has if it simply did what it seemed it would do. ~ Amor Towles

If this conviction had not been a strongly emotional one and if those searching for knowledge had not been inspired by Spinoza's Amor Dei Intellectualis, they would hardly have been capable of that untiring devotion which alone enables man to attain his greatest achievements. ~ Albert Einstein

If we earn fifty cents an hour, we admire the rich and pity the poor, and we reserve the full force of our venom for those who make a penny more or a penny less. ~ Amor Towles

Time is powerless. An instant could be enough for us and eternity could be too short. We, and only we, decide what time is for us. ~ Rom Amor

Yes, thought the Count, the world does spin. In fact, it spins on its axis even as it revolves around the sun. And the galaxy turns as well, a wheel within a greater wheel, producing a chime of an entirely different nature than that of a tiny hammer in a clock. And when that celestial chime sounds, perhaps a mirror will suddenly serve its truer purpose - revealing to a man not who he imagines himself to be, but who he has become. ~ Amor Towles

Suddenly,I could picture Tinker on the back of a horse somewhere: at the edge of the treeline under a towering sky ... at his college roommate's ranch, perhaps ... where rhey hunted deer with antique rifles and with dogs that were better bred than me. ~ Amor Towles

It was time enough for whole lives to have been led and misled... time enough, as the poet said, to murder and create -- or at least, to have warranted the dropping of a question on one's plate. ~ Amor Towles

From the earliest age, we must learn to say good-bye to friends and family. We see our parents and siblings off at the station; we visit cousins, attend schools, join the regiment; we marry or travel abroad. It is part of the human experience that we are constantly gripping a good fellow by the shoulders and wishing him well, taking comfort from the notion that we will hear word of him soon enough. ~ Amor Towles

Oi, meu amor." She said. Hello, my love, in Portuguese. ~ Callie Anderson

Charlotte Sykes approaching from the washrooms. She had changed into high heels and a tangerine-colored blouse that clashed with all her best intentions. ~ Amor Towles

I'm willing to be under anything, she said, as long as it isn't somebody's thumb. ~ Amor Towles

Until then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none in return, for they set my blood on fire. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

He had that certain confidence in his bearing, that democratic interest in his surroundings, and that understated presumption of friendliness that are only found in young men who have been raised in the company of money and manners. It didn't occur to people liek this that they might be unwelcome in a new environment - and as a result they rarely were. ~ Amor Towles

Ever since [that day], a small uncertainty had buzzed between us.It was a sense of chemistry that had been a little elusive, a little imprecise, until now. ~ Amor Towles

Dutifully, the Count put the spoon in his mouth. In an instant, there was the familiar sweetness of fresh honey---sunlit, golden, and gay. Given the time of year, the Count was expecting this first impression to be followed by a hint of lilacs from the Alexander Gardens or cherry blossoms from the Garden Ring. But as the elixir dissolved on his tongue, the Count became aware of something else entirely. Rather than the flowering trees of Central Moscow, the honey had a hint of a grassy riverbank.....the trace of a summer breeze......a suggestion of a pergola.....But most of all there was the unmistakable essence of a thousand apple trees in bloom.
"Nizhny Novgorod", he said.
And it was. ~ Amor Towles

The romantic interplay that we were having wasn't the real game
it was a modified version of the game. It was a version invented for two friends so that they can get some practice and pass the time divertingly while they eat in the station for their train to arrive ~ Amor Towles

For standing at the edge of his table was the young girl with the penchant for yellow - studying him with that unapologetic interest peculiar to children and dogs. Adding ~ Amor Towles

You can't be the only superhero around here. I can do that too. – Hope Danielles ~ Dulce Amor Soriano

Do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to; rather, wish that what happens happen the way it happens: then you will be happy. ~ Epictetus

in the ballroom of the Metropol Hotel on the twenty-first of June 1926, was the heretic, Galileo of Galilei, vindicated by a ping, a splat, a smash, a thunk, a thump, and a thud. Of ~ Amor Towles

By Diverse Means We Arrive at the Same End The ~ Amor Towles

the Confederacy of the Humbled is a close-knit brotherhood whose members travel with no outward markings, but who know each other at a glance. For having fallen suddenly from grace, those in the Confederacy share a certain perspective. Knowing beauty, influence, fame, and privilege to be borrowed rather than bestowed, they are not easily impressed. They are not quick to envy or take offense. They certainly do not scour the papers in search of their own names. They remain committed to living among their peers, but they greet adulation with caution, ambition with sympathy, and condescension with an inward smile. As ~ Amor Towles

The designs of men are notoriously subservient to happenstance, hesitation, and haste; but ~ Amor Towles

Yes, the burning of Moscow was especially Russian, my friend. Of that there can be no doubt. Because it was not a discrete event; it was the form of an event. One example plucked from a history of thousands. For as a people, we Russians have proven unusually adept at destroying that which we have created." Perhaps ~ Amor Towles

You see that thirty-year-old blonde next to Jake? That's his fiancée, Carrie Clapboard. Carrie moved all manner of heaven and earth to get into that chair. And soon she will happily oversee scullery maids and table settings and the reupholstering of antique chairs at three different houses; which is all well and good. But if I were your age, I wouldn't be trying to figure out how to get into Carrie's shoes - I'd be trying to figure out how to get into Jake's. ~ Amor Towles

True, duels were fought by convention at dawn in isolated locations to ensure the privacy of the gentlemen involved. But were they fought behind ash heaps or in scrapyards? Of course not! They were fought in a clearing among the birch trees with a dusting of snow. Or on the banks of a winding rivulet. Or at the edge of a family estate where the breezes shake the blossoms from the trees. . . . That is, they were fought in settings that one might have expected to see in the second act of an opera. ~ Amor Towles