Allen Fan

“only the emperor among three hundred millions is allowed to use vermilion ink. Imagine that. If Queen Victoria said, ‘From now on, only I am allowed to use vermilion,’ as much as we love her, forty thousand Britons would instantly forswear all ink but vermilion. I would mysel’.”
― James Clavell, Tai-Pan

“It is labor alone that is productive: it creates wealth and therewith lays the outward foundations for the inward flowering of man.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition

“The time be gone forever when the like of me’s to suck thy arse ’cause of a poxy title which like as not were gifted first to a king’s whore, a king’s bastard, or buyed by knife in a king’s back.”
― James Clavell, Tai-Pan

“Lately, though, I find myself thinking about the war and my past, about the people I lost.

Lost.

It makes it sound as if I misplaced my loved ones; perhaps I left them where they don't belong and turned away, too confused to retrace my steps.

They are not lost. Nor are they in a better place. They are gone. As I approach the end of my years, I know that grief, like regret, settles into our DNA and remains forever a part of us.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale