Charlotte

“Kinder than is necessary. Because it's not enough to be kind. One should be kinder than needed.”
― R.J. Palacio, Wonder

“Ah, but I’m not a gentleman,” said the Marquis. “I have it on the best of authority that I am only a nobleman.”

“Good gracious, Vidal, who in the world dared to say such a thing?” cried his cousin, instantly diverted.

“Mary,” replied his lordship, pouring himself out a glass of wine.”
― Georgette Heyer, Devil's Cub

“I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.
If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth.
As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong.
“Patroclus,” he said. He was always better with words than I.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Human life, I realized, got progressively worse as you got older, by the sound of things. You arrived, with baby feet and hands and infinite happiness, and then the happiness slowly evaporated as your feet and hands grew bigger. And then, from the teenage years onward, happiness was something you could lose your grip of, and once it started to slip, it gained mass. It was as if the knowledge that it could slip was the thing that made it more difficult to hold, no matter how big your feet and hands were.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans