Find me a gentleman as an honorific as Count Alexander Rostov, I’ll wait.
The book is one of the best ones that I read this year. The stories of people in it are heartwarming or heartbreaking; however you prefer it. I took a long time to finish the book, partly because it was lengthy and because the stories made me feel strange emotions. I remember staying up at night thinking about human life, and all that one goes throughout their lives. The ending of the book is lovely as well.
Time change, people change, and hearts and minds change. The only constant thing is change itself. I often thought about this. Almost every time, I come up with a different interpretation depending on my mood.
“If attentiveness should be measured in minutes and discipline measured in hours, then indomitability must be measured in years. Or, if philosophical investigations are not to your taste, then let us simply agree that the wise man celebrates what he can.”
“By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration – and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.”
“Coffee can energize the industrious at dawn, calm the reflective at noon, or raise the spirits of the beleagured in the middle of the night.” I totally agree with this! In fact, you should check out my page on coffee.
If there is one quality that the book and, more prominently, the Count talks about, it is patience. He says, “If patience wasn’t so easily tested, then it would hardly be a virtue.” I mean, can you even counter that? I don’t think so.
As we age, we are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade.
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