words to inspire before you expire
“Henrietta had been taught by the conduct of both father and mother that every vice might be forgiven in a man and in a son, though every virtue was expected from a woman, and especially from a daughter.”
—from The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
“I couldn’t help feeling, the more I looked at her, that she was like a tree that has begun to lose its leaves. I was so shocked by the whole effect that I think I must have taken a step back, or let out a gasp, or in some way given her some hint of my feelings, for all at once she said to me, in that raspy voice of hers:
‘What are you looking at!’
‘I’m very sorry, ma’am. I was looking at your kimono,’ I told her. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.’
This must have been the right answer—if there was a right answer—because she let out something of a laugh, though it sounded like a cough.
‘So you like it, do you?’ she said, continuing to cough, or laugh, I couldn’t tell which. ‘Do you have any idea what it cost?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘More than you did, that’s for certain.'”
—from Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
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