A Gentleman in Moscow

Quotes

If you admire the written word, you will absolutely love these quotes from “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles.

1. All poetry is a call to action.
2. A king fortifies himself with a castle, a gentleman with a desk.
3. …that adversity presents itself in many forms; and that if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.
4. Life will entice, after all.
5. But every period had its virtues, even a time of turmoil…
6. For pomp is a tenacious force. And a wily one too.
7. If patience wasn’t so easily tested, then it would hardly be a virtue…
8. And that is just how it should be. That sense of loss is that 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.
9. They spoke of the once and the was, of the wishful and the wonderful.
10. But the truth is: No matter how the time passes, those we have loved never slip away from us entirely.
11. For when life makes it impossible for a man to pursue his dreams, he will connive to pursue them anyway.
12. For what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim.
13. … life does not proceed by leaps and bounds. It unfolds. At any given moment, it is the manifestation of a thousand transitions. Our faculties wax and wane, our experiences accumulate, and our opinions evolve — if not glacially, then at least gradually. Such that the events of an average day are as likely to transform who we are as a pinch of pepper is to transform a stew.
14. After all, in the midst of armed conflicts, facts are bound to be just as susceptible to injury as ships and men, if not more so.
15. Fate would not have the reputation it has if it simply did what it seemed it would do.
16. For as it turns out, one can revisit the past quite pleasantly, as long as one does so expecting nearly every aspect of it to have changed.
17. By the smallest of one’s actions, one can restore some sense of order to the world.

Read a commentary on the book here:

A Gentleman in Moscow

Photo by Sunila Khan