Darlington Quotes

Cecil Graham: What is a cynic? Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.

If Alex could have told Darlington anything, it would have been, Come back. She would have said it in English and Spanish. She would have used the imperative.

Galaxy Stern,” Darlington said, his eyes flashing gold, “I have been crying out to you from the start.

Darlington was a good talker, but he was happiest when no one was speaking to him, when he didn’t have to perform the ritual of himself and he could simply be left to watch others.

I c-c-class p-p-profanity with declarations of love. Best used sparingly and only when wholeheartedly m-m-meant. -Darlington

Didn’t someone say love is a shared delusion?

Darlington liked to say that dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.

I’m bound to you, Stern. To the woman who brought me out of hell. I will serve you ’til the end of days.

Alex slept in Darlington's bed and dreamed that he was curled behind her on the narrow mattress. He pulled her close, his fingers digging into her abdomen, and she could feel claws at their tips. He whispered in her ear, "I will serve you 'til the end of days." "And love me," she said with a laugh, bold in the dream, unafraid. But all he said was, "It is not the same.

Come on Darlington,' she said. 'Let's give them hell.

If you don't know a name," Darlington had explained, "you can't think it, and then you won't be tempted to say it." A name was a kind of intimacy.

. . . And as fall turned to winter, the Darlington peach trees started dropping their leaves again, gently, like they were letting them go. It wasnt the same as giving them up. It wasnt the same as losing them.

The fact is, of course,’ I said after a while, ‘I gave my best to Lord Darlington. I gave him the very best I had to give, and now – well – I find I do not have a great deal more left to give.

Darlington’s smile was small. “You found me once, Stern. You’ll find me again.

A single word. Darlington’s voice. Desperate, demanding. Wait. They’d almost done it, almost reached him. They’d been so close. He would have gotten it right. He always did.

Darlington looked at her. Undine with her slick black hair, the center part like a naked spine, her devouring eyes.

Didn't someone say love is a shared delusion?" "Cynical, Darlington. Doesn't suit you at all." "Call it magic if you prefer. Two people reciting the same spell.

Darlington was. He’d go to hell for me, for you, for anyone who needed saving.” “Alex,” Michelle said, dusting off her skirt, “he’d go to hell just to take notes on the climate.

There is only one success: to be able to spend life in your own way and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it.

...but he’d let himself [Darlington] think of her as someone who had made all of the wrong choices and stumbled down the wrong path. It hadn’t occurred to him that she was being chased.

Yes, I do love my husband. I didn't at first. I didn't at first for a long time. When I left Darlington Hall all those years ago, I never realized I was really, truly leaving. I believe I thought of it as simply another ruse, Mr. Stevens, to annoy you. It was a shock to come out here and find myself actually married. For a long time, I was very unhappy, very unhappy indeed.

Prove it to me,” I whispered. “Prove to me you aren't an ass and I'm all yours.

All that evil requires is an absence of virtue, where somebody didn't make a stand.

Italian,” Cecilia said, disappointment withering each syllable. “You need to be a bit older before you can attract a proper assassin, my dear,” Miss Darlington advised from the interior.

She's seen the dead, he thought. She's witnessed horrors. But she's never seen magic.

Dawes had said that Alex and Darlington were tied to the underworld, but the truth was that they were all bound together now. They had seen the very worst of each other, felt every ugly, shameful, frightening thing. Four pilgrims. Four children trembling in the dark. Four fools who had attempted what should never be dared. Four shoddy heroes on a quest who were meant to survive this reckless endeavor together.

Come on, Darlington,” she said. “Let’s give them hell.

We were trying to rescue you, Darlington. There were bound to be hiccups." "I'm not sure I've ever noted your gift for understatement, Stern." "Demonic hiccups.

She was the kind of girl who was always okay. “A survivor,” Darlington had once said, admiration in his voice. “Rough around the edges, but we’ll see if we’ve mined a diamond, won’t we, Pammie?

Don't ever forget where you came from--especially if you don't even know where you are going.

She was no one, a girl who had lucked ito a gift, who had done nothing to earn it. she was his queen

The dean put a finger to his chin as he studied this great and troubling mystery. The applicant’s response reeked of insincerity, like, “Have a nice day!” with all the friendly burned off. “Okay, Mr. Darlington. I’ll just be a minute.

She could hear Darlington's voice in her head: When was the first time you saw them? Low and halting, as if he wasn't sure whether the question was taboo. But the real question, the right question, was: When was the first time you knew to be afraid? Alex was glad he'd never had the sense to ask.

He loves you that much.

He had been tempted to bury his face into his soup bowl and lap at it like a greedy animal. He wanted to place himself between Alex's legs now and do the same to her

Alex remembered Darlington’s delicate feet, his scream as he’d vanished.

In the mirror, he saw himself, a knight with bowed head, offering his service, a sword in his hand, a sword in his back. He felt no pain, only the ache in his heart. Choose me. There were tears on his cheeks, even as he felt the shame of it. She was no one, a girl who had lucked into a gift, who had done nothing to earn it. She was his queen. "Darlington," she said. But that was not his true name any more than Alex was hers. If only she would choose him. If only she would let him... She touched her fingers to his face, lifted his chin. Her lips brushed his ear. He didn't understand it. He only wanted her to do it again. Stars poured through him, a cold and billowing wave of night. He saw everything. He saw their bodies entwined. She was above him and beneath him all at once, her body splayed and white as a lotus flower.

Alex stood guiltily in the middle of the kitchen, waiting for someone to chastise her, maybe even the house. But this was not the mansion on Orange with its hopeful creaks and disapproving sighs. Darlington had been the life of this place, and without him the house felt huge and empty, a shipwreck hull.

Would it help to break something else?' She was breathing hard. 'Maybe.' Darlington rose and opened a cupboard, then another, and another, revealing shelf after shelf of Lenox, Waterford, Limoges-glassware, plates, pitchers, platters, butter dishes, gravy boats, thousands of dollar's worth of crystal and china. He took down a glass, filled it with wine, and handed it to Alex. 'Where would you like to start?

How may we address you this night?” Darlington inquired. The wearer of the mask represented Lan Caihe, one of the eight immortals of Chinese myth, who could move amongst genders at will. At each gathering of Manuscript, a different Caihe was chosen. “Tonight I am she.

You killed them," he said. "All of them. Leonard Beacon. Mitchell Betts. Helen Watson. Hellie." The silence stretched. But all she said was, "Not Hellie.

LADY WINDERMERE: Why do you talk so trivially about life, then? LORD DARLINGTON: Because I think that life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.

No one knew who she was. Not North. Not this monster in front of her. Not Dawes or Mercy or Sandow or any of them. Only Darlington had guessed.

Anselm was nothing like Darlington now. He was a tan in a suit. He was a wealthy grifter looking for an edge and willing to use her to get it. He was one more thief rummaging through artifacts in a country not his own. He was the Lethe Alex understood, not the Lethe Darlington had loved.

Even so, she’d tried all she could to smooth troubled waters. But Darlington had rudely persisted in avoiding the knife (and gun, poison, rabid dog, fall from a great height, garrote, flaming arrow).

Lord Darlington: Oh, nowadays so many conceited people go about Society pretending to be good, that I think it shows rather a sweet and modest disposition to pretend to be bad. Besides, there is to be said. If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.

I'm bound to you Stern. To the women who brought me out of hell. I will serve you 'till the end of days.

Daniel Tabor Arlington, always the gentleman, a boy of infinite manners. But what had he become?

Believe me, Clara. It would be very easy to lay you back down, ease myself inside you, and fuck you senseless. But I can't just screw you on some random couch where anyone could walk in on us. And I can't screw you while the room is spinning and I'm slightly shitfaced. I don't even want to screw you. I want to make love to you. The slow, sweet, all night long kind of love.

How do you do, Lord Darlington? I won’t let you know my daughter, you are far too wicked. LORD DARLINGTON: Don’t say that, Duchess. As a wicked man I am a complete failure. Why, there are lots of people who say I have never really done anything wrong in the whole course of my life. Of course they only say it behind my back.

Everyone knew about Morvath’s hatred of the Darlington clan, which was equaled only by his hatred of the Bassingthwaite clan, his adopted family the Morvath clan, the Hanoverian clan currently represented by Queen Victoria, the Chapman and Hall publishing clan, and the company that made those caramel cream profiteroles that ended up tasting like fish.

You can't walk through hell unchanged

But maybe she’d always been this fucking adorable and I’d just been the jackass who never bothered to notice.

He touched me as if he were trying to memorize the feel of me.

It was too easy to imagine some future Darlington joking about the delicious irony of ignorant Galaxy Stern being fatally clocked in the jaw by rogue knowledge.

The Bridegroom’s lips pursed slightly, and in that moment, he reminded her so much of Darlington, she felt a tremor pass through her.

It could all be an act,” Darlington growled. “Should I put on some tunes?” Tripp asked. “I have this amazing Red Hot Chili Peppers double album—” Maybe they should kill him.

Margaret Darlington had the kind of power that made sane people do insane things.

LADY WINDERMERE: [Lady Julia] was stern to me, but she taught me what the world is forgetting, the difference that there is between what is right and what is wrong. She allowed of no compromise. I allow of none. LORD DARLINGTON: My dear Lady Windermere! LADY WINDERMERE: You look on me as being behind the age. —Well, I am! I should be sorry to be on the same level as an age like this.

Darlington lay in his narrow bed, writing and rewriting angry emails in his head to the Manuscript alumni and the Lethe board, losing the thread, overwhelmed by images of Alex lit by stars, the thought of that black dress sliding from her shoulders, then returning to his rant and a demand for action. The words tangled together, caught on the spokes of a wheel, the points of a crown. But one thought returned again and again as he tossed and turned, fell in and out of dreams, morning light beginning its slow bleed through the high tower window: Alex Stern was not what she seemed.

It occurs to me, furthermore, that bantering is hardly an unreasonable duty for an employer to expect a professional to perform. I have of course already devoted much time to developing my bantering skills, but it is possible I have never previously approached the task with the commitment I might have done. Perhaps, then, when I return to Darlington Hall tomorrow – Mr Farraday will not himself be back for a further week – I will begin practising with renewed effort. I should hope, then, that by the time of my employer’s return, I shall be in a position to pleasantly surprise him.

There’s a beauty to falling. A jump. A rush. A breeze. You could be falling to your death if the ground below comes too quickly. But it’s exhilarating—the fall. So we chase it. And that’s why we fall.

Our lips connected and for one brief, amazing moment Dean melted into me. His hands trailed up my back, pulling my body closer. His lips were warm and soft, lingering against mine, and then suddenly…gone.

DUCHESS OF BERWICK: [A]s a concession to my poor wits, Lord Darlington, just explain to me what you really mean. LORD DARLINGTON: I think I had better not, Duchess. Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.

Why raise children on the promise of magic? Why create a want in them that can never be satisfied—for revelation, for transformation—and then set them adrift in a bleak, pragmatic world? In Darlington she’d seen what grief over that loss could do to someone, but maybe the same mourning lived inside her too. The terrible knowledge that there would be no secret destiny, no kindly mentor to see some hidden talent inside her, no deadly nemesis to best.

Have you nothing to say for yourself? No excuse for betraying your fellow Wisterians?" Miss Fairweather shrugged again. "It made me rich." "I see." Miss Darlington's eyebrows angled together as if to discuss the matter between themselves.

A large proportion of mankind, like pigeons and partridges, on reaching maturity, having passed through a period of playfulness or promiscuity, establish what they hope and expect will be a permanent and fertile mating relationship. This we call marriage.

How can one possibly be held to blame in any sense because, say, the passage of time has shown that Lord Darlington’s efforts were misguided, even foolish? Throughout the years I served him, it was he and he alone who weighed up evidence and judged it best to proceed in the way he did, while I simply confined myself, quite properly, to affairs within my own professional realm. And as far as I am concerned, I carried out my duties to the best of my abilities, indeed to a standard which many may consider ‘first rate’.

The stairs seemed to go on forever, turning and turning until Darlington had no idea how long they'd been climbing. He wanted to look back to make sure that Alex was still there, but he'd read enough stories to know you never looked back on your way out of hell.

Oh,” said Dawes, her eyes darting around the room as if afraid to let her gaze land anywhere, but finally settling in the far corner—the place most distant from the sight of Darlington’s cock, which was very erect and shining like a supercharged, oversized glowstick.

Good. Better. Best. That was the trajectory that got you into this place. What Darlington and probably all the rest of these eager, effortful children couldn't understand was that Alex would have happily settled for less than Yale. Darlington was all about the pursuit of perfection, something spectacular. He didn't know how precious a normal life could be, how easy it was to drift away from average. You started sleeping till noon, skipped one class, one day of school, lost one job, then another, forgot the way that normal people did things. You lost the language of ordinary life. And then, without meaning to, you crossed into a country from which you couldn't return. You lived in a state where the ground always seemed to be slipping from beneath your feet, with no way back to someplace solid.

Darlington was all about the pursuit of perfection, something spectacular. He didn’t know how precious a normal life could be, how easy it was to drift away from average. You started sleeping until noon, skipped one class, one day of school, lost one job, then another, forgot the way that normal people did things. You lost the language of ordinary life. And then, without meaning to, you crossed into a country from which you couldn’t return. You lived in a state where the ground always seemed to be slipping from beneath your feet, with no way back to someplace solid.

Leo backed me against the door frame, his demeanor turning all 'take-no-prisoners' as he pinned me in place with his hips. His hands traced up and down the curve of my body until they wound their way through the loose strands of my hair. He was in control, I was totally at his mercy, and I. Didn’t. Even. Care.

DEEP IN THE ENCHANTED FOREST, in a neat gray house with a wide porch and a red roof, lived the witch Morwen and her nine cats. The cats were named Murgatroyd, Fiddlesticks, Miss Eliza Tudor, Scorn, Jasmine, Trouble, Jasper Darlington Higgins IV, Chaos, and Aunt Ophelia, and not one of them looked anything like a witch’s cat.

Darlington learned that this was always the way with New Haven. It bled industry but stumbled on, bleary and anemic, through corrupt mayors and daft city planners, through misguided government programs and hopeful but brief infusions of capital. “This town, Danny,” his grandfather liked to say, a common refrain, sometimes bitter, sometimes fond.

her seat with a curse. She hadn’t been speeding. She was sure of it. Christy forced herself to focus

You might be the matched half to me. The white to my black.

twelfth

Sweet as hell. Unexpected. Reassuring. It was as if he wanted me to know, in his own particular Noah way, that he hadn’t forgotten about me.

I'm not a wild card, Noah. I'm the safest bet you'll ever make.

Humans are the loneliest of creatures earth amongst all the earth's species, self-consciously and visibly a species apart.

Where's Darlington"? Turner asked. "Spain" "Spain?" For the first time, Turner's mild expression gave way. "Study abroad." "And he left you in charge?" "Sure did." "He must have a lot of faith in you." "Sure does." Alex flashed him her most winning grin, and for a second she thought Detective Turner might smile back, because it took a con to know a con. But he didn't. He'd had to be careful for too long.

Part of me was slightly pissed off that this kiss with him hadn’t happened sooner. As in years ago sooner. Because this one little kiss—it literally rocked my world. He was morphine and I was an instant addict.

Sometimes I forgot our age difference and sometimes it was hard to ignore. Like right now. He radiated a masculinity, a maturity, a confidence, even in his sleep, that other guys my own age just couldn’t even compare to. Maybe that was less about his age and more about him. Either way, it was incredibly sexy—he was incredibly sexy. I kind of loved the fact that he could snap me in two and the fact that I knew he never would.

What happens if you guys miss a year?” Alex had asked when Darlington first showed her how the library worked. “It happened in 1928.” “And?” “All of the books from the collection crowded into the library at once and the floor collapsed on Chester Vance, Oculus.” “Jesus, that’s horrible.” “I don’t know,” Darlington had said meditatively. “Suffocating beneath a pile of books seems an appropriate way to go for a research assistant.

I’d never saved anyone or anything in my whole life. I didn’t like the idea of it. I was nobody’s hero. But the alternative option would have been to let Georgie die, so I guess just this once an exception had to be made.

After a long moment, he said, “Would it help to break something else?” She was breathing hard. “Maybe.” Darlington rose and opened a cupboard, then another, and another, revealing shelf after shelf of Lenox, Waterford, Limoges—glassware, plates, pitchers, platters, butter dishes, gravy boats, thousands of dollars’ worth of crystal and china. He took down a glass, filled it with wine, and handed it to Alex. “Where would you like to start?

Why raise children on the promise of magic? Why create a want in them that can never be satisfied - for revelation, for transformation - and then set them adrift in a bleak, pragmatic world? In Darlington she'd seen what grief over that loss could do to someone, but maybe that same mourning lived inside her too. The terrible knowledge that there would be no secret destiny, no kindly mentor to see some hidden talent inside her, no deadly nemesis to best.

Every new source from which man has increased his power on earth has been used to diminish the prospects of his successors. All his progress has been made at the expense of damage to his environment which he cannot repair and could not foresee.

Lord Darlington wasn’t a bad man. He wasn’t a bad man at all. And at least he had the privilege of being able to say at the end of his life that he made his own mistakes. His lordship was a courageous man. He chose a certain path in life, it proved to be a misguided one, but there, he chose it, he can say that at least. As for myself, I cannot even claim that. You see, I trusted. I trusted in his lordship’s wisdom. All those years I served him, I trusted I was doing something worthwhile. I can’t even say I made my own mistakes. Really – one has to ask oneself – what dignity is there in that?

You didn’t turn away. Even when you didn’t like what you saw in me. You kept looking.” Darlington’s gaze shifted and flickered like firelight. Gold and then amber. Bright and then shadowed. “Maybe I know a fellow monster when I see one.” It felt like a cold hand shoving her away. Like a warning. She wasn’t stupid enough to ignore it. “Maybe,” Alex whispered. She made herself turn, leave the ballroom, walk down that dark hall. She forced herself not to run. Maybe they were just two killers, cursed to endure each other’s company, two doomed spirits trying to find their way home. Maybe they were monsters who liked the feeling of another monster looking back at them. But enough people had abandoned them both. She wasn’t going to be the next.

Good. Better. Best. That was the trajectory that got you to this place. What Darlington and probably all the rest of these eager, effortful children couldn’t understand was that Alex would have happily settled for less than Yale. Darlington was all about the pursuit of perfection, something spectacular. He didn’t know how precious a normal life could be, how easy it was to drift away from average. You started sleeping until noon, skipped one class, one day of school, lost one job, then another, forgot the way that normal people did things. You lost the language of ordinary life. And then, without meaning to, you crossed into a country from which you couldn’t return. You lived in a state where the ground always seemed to be slipping from beneath your feet, with no way back to someplace solid.

What happens when the past - or more specifically heritage - is fabricated? Authenticity and truth are lost. The thread of history is broken and the lessons it can teach us become meaningless, or worse, twisted to tell a different story - a lie. It is crucial to be able to discern the difference, especially now, when the increase in our ability to communicate is counterbalanced by the equally exponential growth in the likelihood of being deceived.

David Brooks, “Our Founding Yuppie,” Weekly Standard, Oct. 23, 2000, 31. The word “meritocracy” is an argument-starter, and I have employed it sparingly in this book. It is often used loosely to denote a vision of social mobility based on merit and diligence, like Franklin’s. The word was coined by British social thinker Michael Young (later to become, somewhat ironically, Lord Young of Darlington) in his 1958 book The Rise of the Meritocracy (New York: Viking Press) as a dismissive term to satirize a society that misguidedly created a new elite class based on the “narrow band of values” of IQ and educational credentials. The Harvard philosopher John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 106, used it more broadly to mean a “social order [that] follows the principle of careers open to talents.” The best description of the idea is in Nicholas Lemann’s The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), a history of educational aptitude tests and their effect on American society. In Franklin’s time, Enlightenment thinkers (such as Jefferson in his proposals for creating the University of Virginia) advocated replacing the hereditary aristocracy with a “natural aristocracy,” whose members would be plucked from the masses at an early age based on “virtues and talents” and groomed for leadership. Franklin’s idea was more expansive. He believed in encouraging and providing opportunities for all people to succeed as best they could based on their diligence, hard work, virtue, and talent. As we shall see, his proposals for what became the University of Pennsylvania (in contrast to Jefferson’s for the University of Virginia) were aimed not at filtering a new elite but at encouraging and enriching all “aspiring” young men. Franklin was propounding a more egalitarian and democratic approach than Jefferson by proposing a system that would, as Rawls (p. 107) would later prescribe, assure that “resources for education are not to be allotted solely or necessarily mainly according to their return as estimated in productive trained abilities, but also according to their worth in enriching the personal and social life of citizens.” (Translation: He cared not simply about making society as a whole more productive, but also about making each individual more enriched.)

You can’t control every event of your life, Miss Darlington, so you might as well enjoy each moment you can and grasp each lovely opportunity that comes your way… such as this glorious, sunny day.

It had been a couple of days since the girls had snuck out to the lake, and since then she’d been working harder. Not for Walter or for Darlington Orchard, but because of Birdie. She could see her through the trees, talking to a pair of workers by the house, looking unsure of herself as usual, her big eyes thoughtful. Murphy ruminated that she might be the first really nice person Murphy had ever met and actually liked. It was something about the way she was so sweet but so rugged when it came to the farm stuff---knowing all about the farm and the animals, like with the sleeping bird the other night. Yesterday she’d driven by in a rusted-out red tractor, spraying the trees. She was sweet. But she wasn’t soft. Murphy could respect that. And she had the uneasy feeling that she didn’t want to let her down.

Grooming is one of the most important monkey activities. They all pick each other’s fur clean of dead skin, dirt and parasites. This is gross, but when monkeys find a tick or flea they pop it in their mouth and eat it. Mmm parasites… what a tasty snack!

Sadece bir elbise." "Sana ne anlatmaya çalışıyordum?" dedi Darlington. "Hiçbir şey sadece bir şey değildir." Ve belki Darlington onun Kraliçe Mab gibi giyinmiş bir kız olmasını istiyordu, kelimeleri seven ve kanında yıldızlar olan.

En garde!” she cried, much to the horror of Miss Darlington’s sensibilities—“A lady should not use French on the street,” she admonished Cecilia,

You learn more about writing by writing. Reading books and attending conferences (while all good and necessary to my mind) aren’t substitutes for actually DOING it.