“Come to think of it, she did not speak a word. Yet I could have sworn she had the most beautiful voice.”
― Julie Klassen, quote from The Silent Governess
“When you set yourself on fire, people love to come and see you burn.”
― Julie Klassen, quote from The Silent Governess
“At the door he turned and looked back. She stood, facing away from him, the sunlight from the window enshrouding her in an unmerited halo of gold. Perhaps, he thought, that was how God saw all His children. Selfish and fallen, yes. But in the forgiving light of His Son, each wore an unmerited halo”
― Julie Klassen, quote from The Silent Governess
“How long had it had been since she'd thought back on the evenings around the fire, number games at the kitchen table, or listening to her father sing? Too long. Yes, there had been bad times. And she had tallied them like figures in a column, not remembering to factor in the good. She had doctored the books.”
― Julie Klassen, quote from The Silent Governess
“You do not esteem good deeds?" She shifted the basket handle to both hands, just as a cool breeze blew a bonnet string across her face.
"My dear Miss Keene, what would the world be without them?"
He brushed the string from her cheek. "Are we not admonished to be doers and not merely hearers of His word? Yet not on a mountain of good deeds can we climb our way to heaven.”
― Julie Klassen, quote from The Silent Governess
“I would never believe it of you, my boy, regardless of the schemers your mother and sister turned out to be. You may not be the most clever boy, nor the most prudent, nor the most gentlemanlike, nor..."
Edward cleared his throat.
"Right! But you have a good heart, and I have every hope that with the proper education and mentoring you will be credit to the family yet.”
― Julie Klassen, quote from The Silent Governess
“Shut your trap, boy. You are hereby disinherited. Davies! I want a new will.”
― Julie Klassen, quote from The Silent Governess
“The virtue of silence is highly commendable, and will contribute greatly to your ease and prosperity. The best proof of wisdom is to talk little, but to hear much. . . . —SAMUEL & SARAH ADAMS, THE COMPLETE SERVANT, 1825”
― Julie Klassen, quote from The Silent Governess
“You do trust Mr. Tugwell, do you not?”
Did he? Trust Tugwell with his secret? Perhaps. Trust him with Miss Keene? The man had fathered five children in six years. No, he did not trust Charles Tugwell with Miss Keene.”
― Julie Klassen, quote from The Silent Governess
“Whenever you give any living creature cause to depend on you, be careful on no account to disappoint it.”
― Julie Klassen, quote from The Silent Governess
“Remember Who it is that has placed you in your present position; perhaps you have no home, perhaps you have experienced a reverse of fortune; no matter what! It is God who has willed it so, therefore look to Him for guidance and protection. —HINTS TO GOVERNESSES, BY ONE OF THEMSELVES, 1856”
― Julie Klassen, quote from The Silent Governess
“If you in fact had no gold, then your situation was hopeless. You would be beaten, burned, tortured, and steamed to the point of death or until they finally came to believe you. But if you had gold, you could determine the extent of your torture, the limits of your endurance, and your own fate. Psychologically, this situation was, incidentally, not easier but more difficult, because if you made an error
you would always be ridden by a guilty conscience. Of course, anyone who had already mastered the rules of the institution would yield and give up his gold—that was easier. But it was a mistake to give it up too readily. They would refuse to believe you had coughed it all up, and they would continue to hold you. But you'd be wrong, too, to wait too long before yielding: you'd end up kicking the bucket or they'd paste a term on you out of meanness. One of the Tatar draymen endured all the tortures: he had no gold! They imprisoned his wife, too, and tortured her, but the Tatar stuck to his story: no gold! Then they arrested his daughter: the Tatar couldn't take it any more. He coughed up 100,000 rubles. At this point they let his family go, but slapped a prison term on him.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, quote from The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books I-II
“Rose, what are you-" Violet started.
We all turned.
Someone was there.
It was Penny.”
― Sophie Cleverly, quote from The Whispers in the Walls
“The way that woman walked, like she was paying the sidewalk a favor.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, quote from 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas
“No he probado la ejecución ni la reclusión perpetua, pero si se puede juzgar a priori, la pena de muerte, a mi juicio, es más moral y humana que la reclusión. La ejecución mata de golpe, mientras que la reclusión vitalicia lo hace lentamente. ¿Cuál de los verdugos es más humano? ¿El que lo mata a usted en pocos minutos o el que le quita la vida durante muchos años?”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from Stories
“The next day, Sunday, June 14, Ahmadinejad held a press conference in the office of the president, on Pasteur Street in south Tehran. In the large white room with its decorative varnished wood panels, I sat among the dozens of Iranian and foreign journalists, taking notes and concentrating on remaining professional, even as I felt the anger inside me growing. The newly reelected president spent the first part of the press conference boasting about his win. When reporters asked about allegations of vote rigging, he barely batted an eye: Mousavi supporters “are like a football team that has lost a game but keeps on insisting that it has won,” he said. He flashed a malicious smile and added, “You’ve lost. Why don’t you accept it?”
― Maziar Bahari, quote from Then They Came for Me: A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival
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