It was so pleasant to sit there looking up at her as she lifted now one book and then another from the shelves, fluttering the pages between her fingers while her profile was outlined against the warm background of old bindings, that he talked on without pausing to wonder at her sudden interest in so unsuggestive a subject. But he could never be long with her without trying to find a reason for what she was doing, and as she replaced the first edition of La Bruyere and turned away from the bookcases, he began to ask himself what she had been driving at… She paused before him with a smile which seemed at once designed to admit him to her familiarity and to remind him of the restrictions it imposed.

Edith Wharton, House Of Mirth

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Because gifted children are able to consider the possibilities of how things might be, they tend to be idealists. However, they are simultaneously able to see that the world is falling short of how it might be.

James T. Webb, Existential Depression in Gifted Individuals

Prestige is the enemy of passion.

Evie Shaffer

Nothing is so commonplace as the wish to be remarkable

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

Your order is meaningless, my chaos is significant

Nathanael West

And so it began. He played “Begin the Beguine” against Tessie’s collarbone. He played “Moonface” against her smooth cheeks. Pressing the clarinet right up against the red toenails that had so dazzled him, he played “It Goes to Your Feet.” With a secrecy they didn’t acknowledge, Milton and Tessie drifted off to quiet parts of the house, and there, lifting her skirt a little, or removing a sock, or once, when nobody was home, pulling up her blouse to expose her lower back, Tessie allowed Milton to press his clarinet to her skin and fill her body with music. At first it only tickled her. But after a while the notes spread deeper into her body. She felt the vibrations penetrate her muscles, pulsing in waves, until they rattled her bones and made her inner organs hum.

Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

It would be my duty to study that I might help him. There would be nothing trivial about our lives. Everyday-things with us would mean the greatest things.

George Eliot, Middlemarch

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.

Albert Einstein

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.

Carl Jung

I confess that neither the structure of languages, nor the code of governments, nor the politics of various states, possessed attractions for me. It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things, or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or, in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Pour Être Belle