Florence Given Quotes

But remember that anyone who tells you you’re “too” anything is using the word because they are threatened by your capacity to grow, evolve and express your emotions.

Choosing yourself will always disappoint some people. The sooner we accept this and make peace with it, the better.

Ask, and it shall be given you, seek, and ye shall find, knock, and it shall be opened unto you. (Mat. 7:7).

Stop breaking yourself down into bite-sized pieces. Stay whole and let them choke.” –

Temporary discomfort is an investment in your future self. Accept a small and uncomfortable transition now, for a lifetime of growth and self-development.

Promise yourself to stop buying into people’s potential. You’re not a start-up investor.

uncomfortable and liberating – exactly what growth is supposed to feel like.

The world owes you nothing, and equally you owe it nothing.

No one’s approval is ever worth compromising your own boundaries and abandoning your own beliefs for.

Imagine all of the past versions of yourself, standing right in front of you. They are all smiling, looking back at you. They are so proud of you.

You are not a source of energy for others to take. This is your table, you set the standards and you choose who gets a seat. Start turning away people who have the audacity to show up in your life with crumbs, because crumbs can’t feed you. Find someone who brings you a whole cake.

Growth can feel isolating. Everything you thought you knew about yourself and the world shifts right before your eyes.

Does this person value your time? Time is another important boundary and a real eye-opener when it comes to how people value their relationship with you. If they always show up late, cancel last minute, and only drop in your life when they need you, they do not respect your time. This is not a reciprocal relationship. You are being used for your energy! Don’t give any time to people who don’t have time for you.

It’s not their bullying that “made me the person I am today”, but my own resilience that enabled me to adapt.

Up until now we have been bombarded with the same stories that either make us subconsciously hate ourselves or hate others. It’s time to change the narrative, and the power lies in your hands. Consume diverse content. Reinvigorate those tired taste buds.

The most important pratical lesson that can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe-how to observe-what symptoms indicate improvement-what the reverse-which are of importance-which are of none-which are the evidence of neglect-and of what kind of neglect.

Crumbs can’t feed me. I want the cake.

Your character is not to be judged by the mistakes you make – but your ability to hold yourself accountable, interrogate your actions and come back with the correct behaviour.

Have you ever been to Florence?” asked Dr. Igor. “No.” “You should go there; it’s not far, for that is where you will find my second example. In the cathedral in Florence, there’s a beautiful clock designed by Paolo Uccello in 1443. Now, the curious thing about this clock is that, although it keeps time like all other clocks, its hands go in the opposite direction to that of normal clocks.” “What’s that got to do with my illness?” “I’m just coming to that. When he made this clock, Paolo Uccello was not trying to be original: The fact is that, at the time, there were clocks like his as well as others with hands that went in the direction we’re familiar with now. For some unknown reason, perhaps because the duke had a clock with hands that went in the direction we now think of as the “right” direction, that became the only direction, and Uccello’s clock then seemed an aberration, a madness.” Dr. Igor paused, but he knew that Mari was following his reasoning. “So, let’s turn to your illness: Each human being is unique, each with their own qualities, instincts, forms of pleasure, and desire for adventure. However, society always imposes on us a collective way of behaving, and people never stop to wonder why they should behave like that. They just accept it, the way typists accepted the fact that the QWERTY keyboard was the best possible one. Have you ever met anyone in your entire life who asked why the hands of a clock should go in one particular direction and not in the other?” “No.” “If someone were to ask, the response they’d get would probably be: ‘You’re crazy.’ If they persisted, people would try to come up with a reason, but they’d soon change the subject, because there isn’t a reason apart from the one I’ve just given you. So to go back to your question. What was it again?” “Am I cured?” “No. You’re someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that, in my view, is a serious illness.” “Is wanting to be different a serious illness?” “It is if you force yourself to be the same as everyone else. It causes neuroses, psychoses, and paranoia. It’s a distortion of nature, it goes against God’s laws, for in all the world’s woods and forests, he did not create a single leaf the same as another. But you think it’s insane to be different, and that’s why you chose to live in Villete, because everyone is different here, and so you appear to be the same as everyone else. Do you understand?” Mari nodded. “People go against nature because they lack the courage to be different, and then the organism starts to produce Vitriol, or bitterness, as this poison is more commonly known.

I don't owe anyone my trauma.

Ask, and it shall be given you, seek, and ye shall find, knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

If you have to perform a level of “prettiness” in order to be chosen by someone, they are choosing you based on your objective beauty. I get that you crave to be chosen by someone based on more than how you look. You want to be chosen for your entire self. Darling, as long as you spend your years chasing male validation, you will exhaust yourself all the way to your grave. Because male validation is a bottomless pit. It won’t ever see you how you deserve to be seen. Stop chasing it. Stop trying to attract it. Stop trying to mould yourself into a palatable Floss. It will consume you and spit you back out once it’s done using you. Your main goal in life is not to be “chosen” by a man anyway. It’s all a big lie. You don’t actually need men for anything. Or at the very least, not in the capacity you’ve been made to think you do.

Knowing you have been unintentionally causing harm and benefitting from unfair systems is uncomfortable. But think about how uncomfortable it must be existing on the flip side of that privilege.

I was taught how to count calories, have boundaries with and say "no" to food as a young girl, before I learned about the importance of having boundaries and saying "no" to other people. What do you think that taught me about being a woman in this world?

Man should receive gracefully the bread returning to him upon the water - freely ye have given, freely ye shall receive.

Given the limits of our knowledge of such psychological problems as belief and motivation, the question of sincerity ... is misleading and fruitless.

Rub your clit as a private act of resistance

Colours don’t have a gender. We placed gender onto them, because gender was socially constructed, it is an idea.

They’re just a distraction. Carry on as you were.

I often wonder what my life would look like if I had learned that my body belongs to me, and me alone, first; that the way my body looks, and its purpose, is not to please others.

Florence and Milan had given him ideas more flexible than those of people who'd stayed at home.

Rub your clit as a private act of resistance.

Exactly, it’s not your problem. A lot of straight men don’t actually know who they are if they aren’t able to “provide” for women. You might find yourself subconsciously doing all kinds of ridiculous things to fluff their egos. For example, pretending you don’t know a lot about a subject, just so he can explain it to you. Society rewards women who don’t have to be told to stay in their lane. It loves women who just readily accept their gender roles and conform, the ones who don’t challenge its regime. Doing little things to please men will afford you a lot of advantages.

The pivotal moment for Florence Nightingale was the realization that she was never going to be given what she knew she needed. She discovered, as she wrote in her journal, that she’d need to take it. She had to demand the life she wanted.

Many people are without vital interests and are hungry to hear what other people are doing. They are usually the ones who keep the radio turned on from early morning till late at night. They must be entertained every minute. Their own affairs do not hold enough interest. A woman once said to me: “I love other people’s affairs.” She lived on gossip. Her conversation consisted of, “I was told,” “I was given to understand,” or “I heard.” It is needless to say she is now paying her Karmic debt. A great unhappiness has overtaken her and everyone knows about her affairs. It is dangerous to neglect your own affairs and to take an idle curiosity in what others are doing. We should all be busily engaged in perfecting ourselves, but take a kindly interest in others.

You’re right, it isn’t. But it happens. Because when women choose to behave outside of our appointed, prescribed gender roles, it unravels centuries of oppressive structures and some people can’t handle their reality being challenged. In the name of preserving this “tradition” they use the tool of shame to keep us in our place. An example is how women are called “bitches” for being assertive, setting firm boundaries or standing up for themselves. Most of the time, it’s not even men who call women bitches. When we turn against each other, it’s patriarchy’s very sneaky way of continuing our oppression – because it gets other women to do its dirty work, so it doesn’t look guilty of being the reason we are taught to compete with and hate each other in the first place.

The day may come when, contemplating a world given back to the primeval forst, a human survivor will have no means of even guessing how much intelligence Man once imposed upon the forms of the earth, when he set up the stones of Florence in the billowing expanse of the Tuscan olive-groves. No trace will be left then of the palaces that saw Michelangelo pass by, nursing his grievances against Raphael; and nothing of the little Paris cafes where Renoir once sat beside Cezanne, Van Gogh beside Gauguin. Solitude, vicegerent of Eternity, vanquishes men's dreams no less than armies, and men have known this ever since they came into being and realized that they must die.

You’re beautiful, Evie,” came his soft comment. Having been raised by relations who had always lamented the garish color of her hair and the proliferation of freckles, Evie gave him a skeptical smile. “Aunt Florence has always given me a bleaching lotion to make my freckles vanish. But there’s no getting rid of them.” Sebastian smiled lazily as he came to her. Taking her shoulders in his hands, he slid an appraising glance along her half-clad body. “Don’t remove a single freckle, sweet. I found some in the most enchanting places. I already have my favorites…shall I tell you where they are?

It’s not fair on your mind to compare your lowest moments to another person’s highlight reel.

But remember that anyone who tells you you’re “too” anything is using the word because they are threatened by your capacity to grow, evolve, and express your emotions.

A lot of people are reluctant to ask for consent because they feel like asking “kills the mood.” But you know what really kills the mood? Sexually assaulting someone.

life is a daily struggle between committing to self-improvement or living in the moment and going with her desires,

It does not make you morally superior to grow out your body hair, and you’re not any less of a feminist for shaving.

You’re beautiful, Evie,” came his soft comment. Having been raised by relations who had always lamented the garish color of her hair and the proliferation of freckles, Evie gave him a skeptical smile. “Aunt Florence has always given me a bleaching lotion to make my freckles vanish. But there’s no getting rid of them.” Sebastian smiled lazily as he came to her. Taking her shoulders in his hands, he slid an appraising glance along her half-clad body. “Don’t remove a single freckle, sweet. I found some in the most enchanting places. I already have my favorites… shall I tell you where they are?” Disarmed and discomfited, Evie shook her head and made a movement to twist away from him. He wouldn’t let her, however. Pulling her closer, he bent his golden head and kissed the side of her neck. “Little spoilsport,” he whispered, smiling. “I’m going to tell you anyway.” His fingers closed around a handful of the chemise and eased the hem slowly upward. Her breath caught as she felt his fingers nuzzling tenderly between her bare legs. “As I discovered earlier,” he said against her sensitive throat, “there’s a trail inside your right thigh that leads to—” A knock at the door interrupted them, and Sebastian lifted his head with a grumble of annoyance. “Breakfast,” he muttered. “And I wouldn’t care to make you choose between my lovemaking or a hot meal, as the answer would likely be unflattering.

I’ve come to learn how loaded the term “bitch” is when used as an insult. Once I realized how often I’d used this to describe women (who were actually just assertive, and reminded me of my own lack of boundaries and my inability to say “no”),

As women we don’t want to admit that we have “pretty privilege” because we have been taught that we should be unaware of our beauty, and to respond to compliments with self-deprecation like, “No, I’m not, look at my . . . [points to ‘flaws’]!

Having "uncomfortable sex" is often accepted as a necessary introduction to womanhood. This sense of "girls not enjoying sex" makes uncomfortable experiences feel normal. That is why the term "rape culture" is used- it describes the social culture fostered that normalizes and justifies rape

Women who don’t have kids are called “selfish” and made to feel that their life is a waste. Women in heterosexual relationships who earn more than their partners are labelled “controlling” or “bossy”. Women who reject sexual advances are called “frigid”, yet that same accuser will call a woman who enjoys casual sex a “slut”. When people make autonomous decisions about their bodies and their lifestyles they are met with a whole spectrum of resistance and this is particularly true for marginalized people. Anything that deviates from the narrative society has written for and about you is shamed and unaccepted.

We pass the apartment we rented five years ago, when I swore off Florence. In summer, wads of tourists clog the city as if it's a Renaissance theme park. Everyone seems to be eating. That year, a garbage strike persisted for over a week and I began to have thoughts of plague when I passed heaps of rot spilling out of bins. I was amazed that long July when waiters and shopkeepers remained as nice as they did, given what they had to put up with. Everywhere I stepped I was in the way. Humanity seemed ugly—the international young in torn T-shirts and backpacks lounging on steps, bewildered bus tourists dropping ice cream napkins in the street and asking, “How much is that in dollars?” Germans in too-short shorts letting their children terrorize restaurants. The English mother and daughter ordering lasagne verdi and Coke, then complaining because the spinach pasta was green. My own reflection in the window, carrying home all my shoe purchases, the sundress not so flattering. Bad wonderland. Henry James in Florence referred to “one's detested fellow-pilgrim.” Yes, indeed, and it's definitely time to leave when one's own reflection is included. Sad that our century has added no glory to Florence—only mobs and lead hanging in the air.

I Can Also Paint Around the time that he reached the unnerving milestone of turning thirty, Leonardo da Vinci wrote a letter to the ruler of Milan listing the reasons he should be given a job. He had been moderately successful as a painter in Florence, but he had trouble finishing his commissions and was searching for new horizons. In the first ten paragraphs, he touted his engineering skills, including his ability to design bridges, waterways, cannons, armored vehicles, and public buildings. Only in the eleventh paragraph, at the end, did he add that he was also an artist. “Likewise in painting, I can do everything possible,” he wrote.

It might feel like a personal attack initially, but if someone cares enough to tell you that something you have said is hurtful or has hurt them, it’s because they value you and they want you to understand how your words affected them. Equally, holding yourself accountable for your own actions is self-love. This is how we grow.

You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked ‘female.’” —Erin McKean

No more watching your subconscious drive your life around for you while you sit in the passenger seat as it unfolds. You’re going to take the wheel and drive it your damn self. Because silence and complacency in situations of injustice make you complicit in the violence. Speak up. Say something. Your words have the power to change the fucking world.

most of the time the attention that my “prettiness” garnered meant that men viewed me as an object, and men don’t respect objects. After all, objects are something we use without reciprocity; it’s a one-sided relationship. It’s why they didn’t handle my rejection well and called me “frigid”—because objects aren’t supposed to have their own desires and motivations.

YF: Okay, I think I get it. What you’re saying is that, either way, no matter what I do as a woman, I can’t win? There’s always going to be compromise? OF: Yes. YF: That sucks. OF: Not if you change your perspective. YF: How do you mean? OF: Well, if you’re going to be punished either way, tell me, what option does that leave you with? YF: To do whatever the fuck I want? OF: Exactly.

As a result of the rigorous beauty standards that we are so harshly held up against, we inevitably find a disturbing amount of comfort in tearing down women who reflect our own insecurities back to us. The drive to become “more beautiful” for male consumption (and capitalist profit) creates a toxic competitiveness among women. How can we happily exist in a world that is built on systems that seek to tear us down?

An example is how women are called “bitches” for being assertive, setting firm boundaries or standing up for themselves. Most of the time, it’s not even men who call women bitches. When we turn against each other, it’s patriarchy’s very sneaky way of continuing our oppression – because it gets other women to do its dirty work, so it doesn’t look guilty of being the reason we are taught to compete with and hate each other in the first place.

Evie's hair had been piled at the crown of her head in a mass of gleaming red curls and fastened with pearl-tipped pins. The scattering of amber freckles across her nose only increased her appeal, as if nature had given in to a moment of whimsy and sprinkled a few flecks of extra sunlight over her. Evie leaned into her partial hug as if she was seeking comfort. "Aunt F-Florence says I look like a f-flaming torch with my hair pinned up like this," she said. Daisy scowled at the comment. "Your aunt Florence should hardly make such statements when she looks like a hobgoblin." "Daisy, hush," Lillian said sternly.

often think about what would happen if, for just one day, women everywhere refused to overextend themselves. I truly believe the world as we know it would crumble. Remembering people’s birthdays, cleaning clothes, cooking, tidying up after others, anticipating others’ needs, being polite to men who make us uncomfortable, doing our makeup in the mornings and skincare routine before bed, offering our help without any real acknowledgment for it. Women are often in positions where they have to constantly remind others to take care of themselves, neglecting themselves in the process. This is why self-care is uniquely important for women and marginalized genders.

He said nothing of the pounding in his heart when he looked at her. He felt short of breath after his long ride. His white skin felt hot to the touch. He did not use the word "love." For the last time in his life he wondered if he had wasted his love on a woman who only gave her love until it was time to take it back. He set the thought aside. He had given his heart this once in his life and counted himself blessed to have had the chance to do so. The question of whether she was worthy of his love had no meaning. His heart had answered that question long ago. "You will protect me," she said. "With my life," he replied.” Excerpt From: Toppy. “The Enchantress of Florence - Salman Rushdie.

You're beautiful, Evie," came his soft comment. Having been raised by relations who had always lamented the garish color of her hair and the proliferation of freckles, Evie gave him a skeptical smile. "Aunt Florence has always given me a bleaching lotion to make my freckles vanish. But there's no getting rid of them." Sebastian smiled lazily as he came to her. Taking her shoulders in his hands, he slid an appraising glance along her half-clad body. "Don't remove a single freckle, sweet. I found some in the most enchanting places. I already have my favorites... shall I tell you where they are?" Disarmed and discomfited, Evie shook her head and made a movement to twist away from him. He wouldn't let her, however. Pulling her closer, he bent his golden head and kissed the side of her neck. "Little spoilsport," he whispered, smiling.

Men don’t look at pretty women on the street and think, “She’s pretty, so I won’t sexually harass her or follow her home.” It’s the opposite. I walk through life with constant vigilance—anxious about the next man who’ll stick his head out his car window and shout something at me, who’ll spike the drink that my “prettiness” encouraged him to buy for me, or who’ll force me to stop in a shop before I go home to make sure I’m not being followed. Keys between my fingers, heart racing, checking over my shoulder, strategizing my safest route home even if it means spending money on a taxi—this is what navigating public spaces looks like for a lot of women. I can’t tell you the amount of times I have contemplated shaving my head to reduce sexual harassment. But to do so would be giving in to the idea that it’s my responsibility to prevent this harassment, not theirs.

Brunelleschi’s successor as a theorist of linear perspective was another of the towering Renaissance polymaths, Leon Battista Alberti (1404 –1472), who refined many of Brunelleschi’s experiments and extended his discoveries about perspective. An artist, architect, engineer, and writer, Alberti was like Leonardo in many ways: both were illegitimate sons of prosperous fathers, athletic and good-looking, never-married, and fascinated by everything from math to art. One difference is that Alberti’s illegitimacy did not prevent him from being given a classical education. His father helped him get a dispensation from the Church laws barring illegitimate children from taking holy orders or holding ecclesiastical offices, and he studied law at Bologna, was ordained as a priest, and became a writer for the pope. During his early thirties, Alberti wrote his masterpiece analyzing painting and perspective, On Painting, the Italian edition of which was dedicated to Brunelleschi. Alberti had an engineer’s instinct for collaboration and, like Leonardo, was “a lover of friendship” and “open-hearted,” according to the scholar Anthony Grafton. He also honed the skills of courtiership. Interested in every art and technology, he would grill people from all walks of life, from cobblers to university scholars, to learn their secrets. In other words, he was much like Leonardo, except in one respect: Leonardo was not strongly motivated by the goal of furthering human knowledge by openly disseminating and publishing his findings; Alberti, on the other hand, was dedicated to sharing his work, gathering a community of intellectual colleagues who could build on each other’s discoveries, and promoting open discussion and publication as a way to advance the accumulation of learning. A maestro of collaborative practices, he believed, according to Grafton, in “discourse in the public sphere.” When Leonardo was a teenager in Florence, Alberti was in his sixties and spending much of his time in Rome, so it is unlikely they spent time together. Alberti was a major influence nonetheless.

It was simple: we are the storytellers. Imagination in Ireland was beyond the beyond. It was out there. It was Far Out before far out was invented in California, because sitting around in a few centuries of rain breeds these outlands of imagination. As evidence, think of Abraham Stoker, confined to bed until he was eight years old, lying there breathing damp Dublin air with no TV or radio but the heaving wheeze of his chest acting as pretty constant reminder that soon he was heading Elsewhere. Even after he was married to Florence Balcombe of Marino Crescent (she who had an unrivalled talent for choosing the wrong man, who had already given up Oscar Wilde as a lost cause in the Love Department when she met this Bram Stoker and thought: he seems sweet), even after Bram moved to London he couldn’t escape his big dark imaginings in Dublin and one day further down the river he spawned Dracula (Book 123, Norton, New York). Jonathan Swift was only settling into a Chesterfield couch in Dublin when his brain began sailing to Lilliput and Blefuscu (Book 778, Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift, Penguin, London). Another couple of deluges and he went further, he went to Brobdingnag, Laputa, Bainbarbi, Glubbdubdrib, Luggnagg and . . . Japan, before he went furthest of all, to Houyhnhnms. Read Gulliver’s Travels when you’re sick in bed and you’ll be away. I’m telling you. You’ll be transported, and even as you’re being carried along in the current you’ll think no writer ever went this Far. Something like this could only be dreamt up in Ireland. Charles Dickens recognised that.

I once saw a striking contrast in the use made of material in Florence. I saw first in the Boboli gardens the two wonderful figures of the barbarians-you remember perhaps those antique stone statues. They are made of stone, consist of stone, represent the spirit of stone: you feel that stone has had the word! Then I went to the tombs of the Medici and saw what Michelangelo did to stone; there the stone has been brought to a super-life. It makes gestures which stone never would make; it is hysterical and exaggerated. The difference was amazing. Or go further to a man like Houdon and you see that the stone becomes absolutely acrobatic. There is the same difference between the Norman and Gothic styles. In the Gothic frame of mind stone behaves like a plant, not like a normal stone, while the Norman style is completely suggested by the stone. The stone speaks. Also an antique Egyptian temple is a most marvelous example of what stone can say; the Greek temple already plays tricks with stone, but the Egyptian temple is made of stone. It grows out of stone — the temple of Abu Simbel, for example, is amazing in that respect. Then in those cave temples in India one sees again the thing man brings into stone. He takes it into his hands and makes it jump, fills it with an uncanny sort of life which destroys the peculiar spirit of the stone. And in my opinion it is always to the detriment of art when matter has no say in the game of the artist. The quality of the matter is exceedingly important — it is all-important. For instance, I think it makes a tremendous difference whether one paints with chemical colors or with so-called natural colors. All that fuss medieval painters made about the preparation of their backgrounds or the making and mixing of their colors had a great advantage. No modern artist has ever brought out anything like the colors which those old masters produced. If one studies an old picture, one feels directly that the color speaks, the color has its own life, but with a modern artist it is most questionable whether the color has a life of its own. It is all made by man, made in Germany or anywhere else, and one feels it. So the projection into matter is not only a very important but an indispensable quality of art. Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 948-949)

When Florence Allen took a bite of her dessert the expression on her face changed completely. She looked puzzled at first, as if she wasn't at all sure it was cake that she was eating. She cut herself another bite and then held up her fork and looked at it for a minute before slipping it into her mouth. She chewed slowly, as if she were a scientist engaged in an important experiment. She lifted up her plate and held it up to the light, studied it from different angles. Then she dipped down her nose and inhaled the cake. "This is sweet potato." I dabbed at my eyes again and told her that it was. "Sweet potatoes and raisins and... rum? That's a spiked glaze?" I nodded. She took another bite and this time she ate it like a person who knew what she was getting into. She closed her eyes. She savored. "This is," she said. "This is..." "Easy," I said. "I can give you the recipe." She opened up her eyes. She had lovely dark eyes. "This is brilliant. This is a brilliant piece of cake." In my family people tended to work against the cake. They wished it wasn't there even as they were enjoying it. But Florence Allen's reaction was one I rarely saw in an adult: She gave in to the cake. She allowed herself to love the cake. It wasn't that she surrendered her regrets (Oh well, I'll just have to go to the gym tomorrow, or, I won't have any dinner this week). She had no regrets. She lived in the moment. She took complete pleasure in the act of eating cake. "I'm glad you like it," I said, but that didn't come close to what I meant. "Oh, I don't just like it. I think this is-" But she didn't say it. Instead she stopped and had another bite. I could have watched her eat the whole thing, slice by slice, but no one likes to be stared at. Instead I ate my own cake. It was good, really. Every raisin bitten gave a sweet exhalation of rum. It was one of those cakes that most people say should be made for Thanksgiving, that it was by its nature a holiday cake, but why be confined? I was always one to bake whatever struck me on any given day. Florence Allen pressed her fork down several times until she had taken up every last crumb. Her plate was clean enough to be returned to the cupboard directly. "I've made sweet potato pies," she said. "I've baked them and put them in casseroles, but in a cake? That never crossed my mind." "It isn't logical. They're so dense. I think of it as the banana bread principle.

Her black hair was pulled back into a perfectly coiffed bun at the nape of her neck, and the cultured pearl necklace Lee’s father had given her years ago lay flat upon her flawless ivory skin. She did not bother to look up from her magazine. “Where’s Kate?” He ignored her question as to his nanny’s whereabouts and did not allow the queasy feeling in his stomach to stop him from asking the question that had been on his mind for a long time.

Promise yourself to stop buying into people’s potential. You’re not a start-up investor.

Gender roles are socially constructed and we are allowed to behave as closely, or as far away from them, as we wish.

Make a promise to yourself to stop investing in people’s potential. You’re not a start-up investor.

It’s difficult when someone you love is saying something wrong and you don’t want to correct them in case you come off as too “political” or “sensitive”. But these are exactly the discussions you need to be having to change the world.

I am sure I don't know what I should do without Florence," admitted Mrs. Troyle; "she understands my hair. I've long ago given trying to do anything with it myself. I regard one's hair as I regard husbands: as long as long is seen together in public one's private divergences don't matter. Surely that was the lucheon gong.

to whom much is given, much is required. You will be challenged on more than one occasion.

Growth can feel isolating. Everything you thought you knew about yourself and the world shifts right before your eyes. You’ll start to notice unhealthy and toxic qualities in your friends as well as yourself.

MONOPOLIES, LIKE USURY, were illegal under Church law. Because unnatural. God had given the natural world to all mankind, not to a chosen few. Denying people liberty and keeping prices artificially high, monopolies were obviously a form of stealing and could only lead to perdition.

I was taught how to count calories, have boundaries with, and say “no” to food as a young girl, before I learned about the importance of having boundaries with and saying “no” to other people.

Do you even want kids? Or do you feel a pressure to have them because, as well as her ability to be beautiful, a woman’s worth in this society has also been based on her ability to reproduce? You are not a failure if you do not have children

one of the legends of Agrippa concerns a visit paid to his alchemical laboratory in Florence by the Wandering Jew himself. (In David Hoffman’s Chronicles of Cartaphilus, the Wandering Jew, the date is given as 1525.) Cartaphilus begged Agrippa to show him his childhood sweetheart in a magic mirror. Agrippa asked him to count off the decades since the girl died so that he could wave his wand for each decade; when the Jew reached 149, Agrippa began to feel dizzy; but the Jew went on numbering them until the mirror showed a scene 1,510 years earlier, in Palestine. The girl, Rebecca, appeared, and the Jew was so moved that he tried to speak to her—which Agrippa had strictly forbidden. The mirror immediately clouded over and the Jew fainted. On reviving, he identified himself as the Jew who struck Jesus when he was carrying the cross, and who has been condemned to walk the earth ever since.

Stop breaking yourself down into bite-sized pieces. Stay whole and let them choke.

Stop saying “sure” to everything when really you mean “no.” If protecting your energy and refusing to entertain things that don’t nourish your soul makes you a “bitch”—then go ahead, be a bitch.

She’d said the tree knew all her secrets, and once, when her memory had started to go but she was having an aware moment, she’d told Samantha that it was a good thing she’d given all her memories to Albert so he and his saplings could remember things for her.

I think about how hard it is to leave someone you’ve created your entire sense of self around. You can’t just get up and go. It’s frightening because it feels like they get to keep a part of you, and you are left with nothing but the shell of a person you’ve become in giving yourself to them. But the fact I asked him to leave must mean there is a shred of self-love or at least self-preservation coursing through me, out of sight right now, but not out of mind.

Think about the person you could become if you stopped searching for value in your ability to fix others, and put that energy into yourself and your own life. Imagine the sheer power and confidence you would radiate! Imagine.

You don’t have time in this life to be wasting precious energy on people who don’t even realize what a privilege it is to be in your life.

I walk through life with constant vigilance—anxious about the next man who’ll stick his head out his car window and shout something at me, who’ll spike the drink that my “prettiness” encouraged him to buy for me, or who’ll force me to stop in a shop before I go home to make sure I’m not being followed. Keys between my fingers, heart racing, checking over my shoulder, strategizing my safest route home even if it means spending money on a taxi—this is what navigating public spaces looks like for a lot of women. I can’t tell you the amount of times I have contemplated shaving my head to reduce sexual harassment. But to do so would be giving in to the idea that it’s my responsibility to prevent this harassment, not theirs.

Enter feminism, the world of hating everything. Just kidding! Kind of.

Just consider, my lords,’ he said, ‘this poor young man’s simplicity. Here he is accusing himself of having given someone a slap because he thinks it less of an offence than it is to give a punch, while in fact the penalty for slapping someone in the New Market is twenty-five crowns, as against little or nothing when it comes to punching. He is a very talented young man and he supports his family by the hard work he’s always doing. I wish to God there were a great many more of his kind in Florence, instead of a shortage.

Temporary discomfort is an investment in your future self. Accept a small and uncomfortable transition now for a lifetime of potential growth and self-development.

She had read accounts of the hero’s welcome Mickiewicz received in Florence when he arrived with his regiment—“O, Dante of Poland!”—and she had given her Tribune readers his full address to the cheering crowds. She learned of Mazzini’s triumphal return to Milan in April; until this month the target of a death warrant, this “most beauteous man,” in Margaret’s estimation, was now greeted as his country’s true leader.

But remember that anyone who tells you you’re “too” anything is using the word because they are threatened by your capacity to grow, evolve, and express your emotions. They want you to stay down there, with them—emotionally and morally stunted. You are a mirror reflecting back to them the parts of themselves that they know they’re lacking.

You don’t owe anyone your trauma. Social media can sometimes make it feel like we owe it to people to share with them the most intimate details of our lives in the name of “transparency”—but why cut yourself open and show the most vulnerable, unhealed, and intimate parts of yourself if it feels uncomfortable?

Crumbs are only tempting when you’re hungry, so you must ensure that you’re always full on your own.

YOU EVEN WANT TO SEE THIS PERSON AGAIN, OR CAN YOUR EGO JUST NOT HANDLE BEING UNWANTED?

growth requires accountability, and accountability is questioning whether “bad people” might actually be wandering into your life because they’re attracted to your lack of boundaries and staying in your life because you’re afraid of conflict.

The beauty standards of our society are racist, fatphobic, ageist, and, quite frankly, confusing.

Mabel was the leader of a group of senior ladies, known affectionately as the “Old Biddies”, who ruled the village of Meadowford-on-Smythe with a meddling fist and prying nose. Like many retired pensioners, Mabel and her three friends—Glenda, Florence, and Ethel—had time on their hands and energy to spare. The problem was, instead of directing it towards knitting, gardening, and grandchildren, the Old Biddies seemed to have developed an unhealthy interest in crime. When they weren’t reading Agatha Christie novels, they were busy trying to re-enact one, and their meddling in recent murder cases had already given local police a big headache.

And then I understood: only then, sipping nettle soup, tasting the green shoots, the force of life itself that had pushed the young nettles up through paving stones, cobbles, packed mud. Ugolino had flavored his dishes with this. With everything: our food. The steam that drifted, invisible, through the streets. The recipes, written in books or whispered on deathbeds. The pots people stirred every day of their lives: tripe, ribollita, peposo, spezzatino, bollito. Making circles with a spoon, painting suns and moons and stars in broth, in battuta. Writing, even those who don't know their letters, a lifelong song of love. Tessina dipped her spoon, sipped, dipped again. I would never taste what she was tasting: the alchemy of the soil, the ants which had wandered across the leaves as they pushed up towards the sun; salt and pepper, nettles; or just soup: good, ordinary soup. And I don't know what she was tasting now, as the great dome of the cathedral turns a deeper red, as she takes the peach from my hand and steals a bite. Does she taste the same sweetness I do? The vinegar pinpricks of wasps' feet, the amber, oozing in golden beads, fading into warm brown, as brown as Maestro Brunelleshi's tiles? I don't know now; I didn't then. But there was one thing we both tasted in that good, plain soup, though I would never have found it on my tongue, not as long as I lived. It had no flavor, but it was there: given by the slow dance of the spoon and the hand which held it. And it was love.

Leonardo began painting Mona Lisa in 1503 or 1504 in Florence, working occasionally on the piece for four years, before moving to France. He worked intermittently on the painting for another three years, finishing it shortly before he died in 1519. Most likely through the heirs of Leonardo’s assistant Salai, the king bought the painting for 4,000 écus and kept it at Château Fontainebleau, where it remained until given to Louis XIV, who moved it to the Palace of Versailles. After the French Revolution, it was relocated to the Louvre. Napoleon I had the portrait moved to his personal bedroom in the Tuileries Palace, but it was later returned to the Louvre.

He must have thought to himself that it would be possible to abandon the usual profile view of women in Florence, without immediately giving rise to moral doubts. The side view said too little about a person; it was inhibiting, because it prevented dialogue. In order to be on an equal footing with the viewer, if not actually superior to him, the painted figure must be able to return his gaze. God had given people eyes so that they could understand the world, so they should be used, not hidden. “Oh eye, you stand supreme above all the other creations of God!” exclaimed Leonardo. “It is the window of the human body, through which it sees its way and enjoys the beauty of the world; it is thanks to the eye that the soul is content with its human prison.” 17

grey, the cold biting. Caroline wore the heather-coloured herringbone wool coat that Florence had found in one of her weekly trawls through the charity shops. It was slightly big on the shoulders, but roomy enough to accommodate her new shape. Around her neck she’d wrapped the cashmere shawl, its softness and warmth a blessing. ‘Be back before you know it,’ Florence said, rubbing condensation from the windscreen with her gloved hand. ‘Three days, two nights. It’ll fly by.’ Caroline doubted that, but she made no reply as they pulled away from the cottage. Outside the station Florence parked in a loading bay, something she did regularly. As far as Caroline knew, she never got a parking ticket. The traffic wardens must recognise the grey van, and decide to leave well enough alone. They walked in. Caroline joined the queue at the ticket desk. ‘Return to Brighton,’ she said to the clerk when her turn came. ‘Change in London,’ he replied, barely glancing at her. Out in the area at the rear, they scanned the parked buses. ‘There’s yours,’ Florence said, pointing. ‘Get on and find a seat before they’re gone.’ They’d exchanged presents the night before, after Caroline’s confession. Florence had given her a jar of hand cream and a pair of fur-lined boots. They’re not new, she’d said of the boots, but they’ll keep you warm. Caroline’s gift to her was a sky blue cashmere wrap that she’d knitted one afternoon when Florence was out at work. Predictably, Florence had tut-tutted at the expense – You have more money than sense – but when Caroline had wrapped