maisie!

“It is not uncommon to encounter persons who are in the habit of making outlandish claims. It is rarer to meet persons who are also in the habit of fulfilling them, and it was to this second group that Miss Kitty Talbot belonged.”
― Sophie Irwin, A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting

“Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men of any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they all are!”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come to determine what share was his of our local heavens.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Even at this late date, I continue to hear feel-good suggestions that the political conflicts of the moment are the result of incivility, tribalism, “affective partisanship,” or some other unfortunate trend in manners that affects every side of the political debates equally. All will be well, the thinking goes, if the red people and the blue people would just sit down for some talk therapy and give a little to the other side. In earlier times this may have been sage advice. Today it is a delusion. American democracy is failing because it is under direct attack, and the attack is not coming equally from both sides. The movement described in this book isn’t looking for a seat at the noisy table of American democracy; it wants to burn down the house.”
― Katherine Stewart, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy