Like bottles of wine, two men will differ radically from each other for being born a year apart or on neighboring hills.

a room is the summation of all that has happened inside it.”

No matter how much time passes, those we have loved never slip away from us entirely.”

That sense of loss is exactly what we must anticipate, prepare for, and cherish to the last of our days; for it is only our heartbreak that finally refutes all that is ephemeral in love.

We don’t know how a man or his achievements will be perceived three generations from now, any more than we know what his great-great-grandchildren will be having for breakfast on a Tuesday in March.

Always to shine, to shine everywhere, to the very depths of the last days . .

“It is a sad but unavoidable fact of life,” he began, “that as we age our social circles grow smaller. Whether from increased habit or diminished vigor, we suddenly find ourselves in the company of just a few familiar faces.

indeed, was a formidable sentence—one that was on intimate terms with the comma, and that held the period in healthy disregard.

Simply put, the Count found political discourse of any persuasion to be tedious.