#sca

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#criticism #oscar-wilde #peril #read #surface

She raised her chin and her pale, black-fringed eyes sparkled in the moonlight. Ellen had never told her that desire and attainment were two different matters; life had not taught her that the race was not to the swift. She lay in the silvery shadows with courage rising and made the plans that a sixteen-year-old makes when life has been so pleasant that defeat is an impossibility and a pretty dress and a clear complexion are weapons to vanquish fate. ↗

— Margaret Mitchell

#courage

President Obama's reelection started the countdown for lawmakers to address the fiscal cliff and the statutory debt limit. Unless the President and House Republicans can agree on changes to current law, the U.S. economy will be in recession by spring. ↗

— Mark Zandi

#agree #changes #cliff #current #current law

Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author’s words reverberating in your head. ↗

— Paul Auster

#choice #comfort #comsolation #escape #pleasure

She felt just like that girl in that book with the letter A on her chest. Only her A signified Alone. She was an outcast, cast out by her own choices, an outsider with a pretty face. Like a rose, she may have been beautiful to look at, but almost everyone only knew the thorny side. ↗

— Victoria Kahler

#loneliness #outcast #scarlet-letter #beauty

In my life I have had various health threats: polio, seizures, a brain aneurysm. None of these things has really changed me much, although it is hard to say for sure. These are events that are part of my life. They make me who I am. I am thankful for them. They are scary. ↗

— Neil Young

#scary #change

Such beautiful scarlet hair....Why don't we call you 'Erza Scarlet'? It's the color of your hair, that way, I won't forget it!" -Jellal Fernandes ↗

— Hiro Mashima

#fairy-tail #jellal #beauty

this woman is a genius in the day time and a beauty at night ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#beauty

Together they spent their whole lives waiting for their luck to change, as though luck were some fabulous tide that would one day flood and consecrate the marshes of our island, christening us in the iridescent ointments of a charmed destiny. ↗

— Pat Conroy

#destiny #island #landscape #luck #south-carolina

For a moment she lay still in the big bed, blinking sleepily, loath to move. And then she realized that the angel’s song hadn’t stopped on her waking. Silence sat up. The tantalizingly beautiful voice was coming from the half-open door to Mickey O’Connor’s room. ↗

— Elizabeth Hoyt

#scandalous-desires #silence #beauty