Scarlet

“You cannot be buried in obscurity: you are exposed upon a grand theater to the view of the world. If your actions are upright and benevolent, be assured they will augment your power and happiness.”
― Cyrus the Great

“To be granite and to doubt! To be the statue of Chastisement cast in one piece in the mould of the law, and suddenly to become aware of the fact that one cherishes beneath one's breast of bronze something absurd and disobedient which almost resembles a heart! To come to the pass of returning good for good, although one has said to oneself up to that day that that good is evil! To be the watch-dog, and to lick the intruder's hand! To be ice and melt! To be the pincers and to turn into a hand! To suddenly feel one's fingers opening! To relax one's grip,—what a terrible thing!”
― Victor Hugo

“It is youth’s felicity as well as its insufficiency that it can never live in the present, but must always be measuring up the day against its own radiantly imagined future - flowers and gold, girls and stars, they are only prefigurations and prophecies of that incomparable, unattainable young dream.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, and Other Stories

“What have you to do with hearts, except for dissection?”
― Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Good Lady Ducayne