The collection / 87 fragments

The living archive

Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

SearchTypeTopicEraCulture / collection labelCountry attributionTraditionOrder

Author

Leave empty for every voice. Browse all authors ↗

Reset

Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

87 results · Page 2 of 4Play this collection ▷

01c. 1958 AD

Loss was like that, Gamache knew. You didn't just lose a loved one. You lost your heart, your memories, your laughter, your brain and it even took your bones. Eventually it all came back, but different. Rearranged

Louise Penny / quote

↗

02c. 1958 AD

They'd crossed over to that continent where grieving parents lived. It looked the same as the rest of the world, but wasn't. Colors bled pale. Music was just notes. Books no longer transported or comforted, not fully. Never again. Food was nutrition, little more. Breaths were sighs. And they knew something the rest didn't. They knew how lucky the rest of the world was.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

03c. 1958 AD

Grief was dagger-shaped and sharp and pointed inward. It was made of fresh loss and old sorrow. Rendered and forged and sometimes polished. Irene Finney had taken her daughter’s death and to that sorrow she’d added a long life of entitlement and disappointment, of privilege and pride. And the dagger she’d fashioned was taking a brief break from slashing her insides, and was now pointed outward.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

04c. 1958 AD

That was the danger. Not that betrayals happened, not that cruel things happened, but that they could outweigh all the good. That we could forget the good and only remember the bad.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

05c. 1958 AD

She knew that kindness kills. All her life she'd suspected this and so she'd only ever been cold and cruel. She'd faced kindness with cutting remarks. She'd curled her lips at smiling faces. She'd twisted every thoughtful, considerate act into an assault. Everyone who was nice to her, who was compassionate and loving, she rebuffed.Because she'd loved them. Loved them with all her heart, and wouldn't see them hurt. Because she'd known all her life that the surest way to hurt someone, to maim and cripple them, was to be kind. If people were exposed, they die. Best to teach them to be armored, even if it meant she herself was forever alone. Sealed off from human touch.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

06c. 1958 AD

That was why she was happy. He now knew that happiness ad kindness went together. There was not one without the other. For Jean-Guy it was a struggle. For Annie it seemed natural.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

07c. 1958 AD

I've been treating you with courtesy and respect because that's the way I choose to treat everyone. But never, ever mistake kindness with weakness.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

08c. 1958 AD

…in the library…surrounded by things far more dangerous than what roamed the school corridors. For here thoughts were housed.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

09c. 1958 AD

Beauvoir left their home wanting to call his wife and tell her how much he loved her, and then tell her what he believed in, and his fears and hopes and disappointments. To talk about something real and meaningful. He dialed his cell phone and got her. But the words got caught somewhere south of his throat. Instead he told her the weather had cleared, and she told him about the movie she'd rented. Then they both hung up.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

10c. 1958 AD

The only thing money really buys?...Space. A bigger house, a bigger car, a larger hotel room. First-class plane tickets. But it doesn't even buy comfort. No one complains more than the rich and entitled. Comfort, security, ease. None of them come with money.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

11c. 1958 AD

Not everything buried is actually dead. For many, the past is alive.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

12c. 1958 AD

Life is choice. All day, every day. Who we talk to, where we sit, what we say, how we say it. And our lives become defined by our choices. It's as simple and as complex as that. And as powerful. So when I'm observing, that's what I'm watching for. The choices people make.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

13c. 1958 AD

And Beauvoir knew then the man was a saint. He's been touched by any number of medical men and women. All healers, all well intentioned, some kind, some rough. All made it clear they wanted him to live, but none had made him feel that his life was precious, was worth saving, was worth something.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

14c. 1958 AD

Jesus, is Gamache hiring fetuses now?

Louise Penny / quote

↗

15c. 1958 AD

I just sit where I'm put, composedof stone and wishful thinking:that the deity who kills for pleasurewill also heal,that in the midst of your nightmare,the final one, a kind lionwill come with bandages in her mouthand the soft body of a woman,and lick you clean of fever, and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neckand caress you into darkness and paradise.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

16c. 1958 AD

They spoke in semaphore, all punctuation unnecessary.“You?”“Great.”They’d trimmed the language to its essentials. Before long it would just be consonants. Then silence.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

17c. 1958 AD

What killed people wasn't a bullet, a blade, a fist to the face. What killed people was a feeling. Left too long. Sometimes in the cold, frozen. Sometimes buried and fetid. And sometimes on the shores of a lake, isolated. Left to grow old, and odd.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

18c. 1958 AD

She’d forgotten to love, but she also forgot to hate. (about Clara’s mother, who had dementia)

Louise Penny / quote

↗

19c. 1958 AD

Maybe this was now normal for Olivier. Maybe every now and then he simply wept. Not in pain or sadness. The tears were just overwhelming memories, rendered into water, seeping out.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

20c. 1958 AD

Don't be so sure," said Gamache. "It's a little humbling to realize the pedestal isn't quite so high after all."Brebeuf chuckled. "Welcome to earth, Armand. It's a little dirty down here.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

21c. 1958 AD

To be silent. In hopes of not offending, in hopes of being accepted. But what happened to people who never spoke, never raised their voices? Kept everything inside?Gamache knew what happened. Everything they swallowed, every word, thought, feeling rattled around inside, hollowing the person out. And into that chasm they stuffed their words, their rage.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

22c. 1958 AD

They stared ahead. Silent. Morin had never realized murderers were caught in silence. But they were.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

23c. 1958 AD

As the boys screamed and hauled off handfuls of mulch, Olivier had slowly, deliberately, gently taken Gabri’s hand and held it before gracefully lifting it to his lips. The boys had watched, momentarily stunned, as Olivier had kissed Gabri’s manure-stained hand with his manure-stained lips. The boys had seemed petrified by this act of love and defiance. But just for a moment. Their hatred triumphed and soon their attack had re-doubled.

Louise Penny / quote

↗

24c. 1958 AD

But we don't have to react. That's what I'm saying. A police force, like a government, should be above that. Just because we're provoked doesn't mean we have to act. -- Still Life

Louise Penny / quote

↗