Quotes from Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt

“For the Vanderbilts lived in a day when flaunting one’s money was not only accepted but celebrated. What may have started as playacting, as dressing up as dukes and princesses for fancy dress balls in fairytale palaces, soon developed into a firm conviction that they were indeed the new American nobility.”
― quote from Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt

“GENTLEMEN You have undertaken to cheat me. I won’t sue you, for the law is too slow. I’ll ruin you. C. Vanderbilt”
― quote from Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt

“If ever Scott Fitzgerald needed evidence to substantiate his aphorism that “the very rich…are different from you and me,” it was here in spades in this portrait gallery of extravagant crazies that is the unique saga of the Vanderbilt family.”
― quote from Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt

“The secret of my success is this: I never tell what I am going to do till I have done it.”62”
― quote from Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt

“A dinner invitation once accepted is a sacred obligation. If you die before the dinner takes place, your executor must attend.”
― quote from Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt

“In the hidden reaches where memory probes lie sorrows too deep to fathom.”
― quote from Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt

Popular quotes

“It was like Mama was lost in the desert and had gotten so thirsty that she was willing to see anything that might make her feel better about being lost.”
― Wiley Cash, quote from A Land More Kind Than Home

“Poverty is a great cutter-off and riches a great shutter-off.”
― Lawrence Durrell, quote from Justine

“But whichever form it took it brought with it, in those moments of bitter anguish, such a desperate surge of hope that it was almost untouchable, and flitted away like a golden butterfly into the bright blue sky - beautiful, unreachable and completely transistent.”
― Tabitha Suzuma, quote from A Note of Madness

“Ready?" Quinn asked when Sky wandered off and we couldn't avoid the family tent anymore.
"Hell, no."
"Me neither."
Mom and Dad waited just inside the tent flap. The light from the oil lamps glinted off fangs, narrowed eyes, and Mom's weapon collection.
"Congratulations." Dad spoke first, his voice soft as smoke before it fills your lungs. "I honestly don't know which of my children I'm angriest with right now.”
― Alyxandra Harvey, quote from Blood Moon

“You are the greatest comfort for exhausted spirits. By the weight of your tenets and the delightfulness of your singing you have so refreshed me that I now think myself capable of facing the blows of Fortune. You were talking of cures that were rather sharp. The thought of them no longer makes me shudder; in fact I'm so eager to hear more, I fervently beg you for them.'

'I knew it,' She replied. 'Once you began to hang onto my words in silent attention, I was expecting you to adopt this attitude, or rather, to be more exact, I myself created it in you. The remedies still to come are, in fact, of such a kind that they taste bitter to the tongue, but grow sweet once they are absorbed.
But you say you are eager to hear more. You would be more than eager to hear if you knew the destination I am trying to bring you to.'

I asked what it was and she told me that it was true happiness.

'Your mind dreams of it,' she said, 'but your sight is clouded by shadows of happiness and cannot see reality.'

I begged her to lead on and show me the nature of true happiness without delay.

'For you,' she said, 'I will do so gladly.”
― Boethius, quote from The Consolation of Philosophy

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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