Good Concierge Quotes

First, we think all truth is beautiful, no matter how hideous its face may seem. We accept all of nature, without any repudiation. We believe there is more beauty in a harsh truth than in a pretty lie, more poetry in earthiness than in all the salons of Paris. We think pain is good because it is the most profound of all human feelings. We think sex is beautiful even when portrayed by a harlot and a pimp. We put character above ugliness, pain above prettiness and hard, crude reality above all the wealth in France. We accept life in its entirety without making moral judgments. We think the prostitute is as good as the countess, the concierge as good as the general, the peasant as good as the cabinet minister, for they all fit into the pattern of nature and are woven into the design of life!

Good morning,” she said. “Are you drunk?” She noticed what a split second it took for him to flare into aggression. “Do I look it?” “No. Where is Citizen Danton?” “I’ve done away with him. I’ve been busy dismembering him for the last three hours. Would you like to help me carry his remnants down to the concierge? Oh really, Louise! He’s in bed and asleep, where do you think he is?” “And is he drunk?” “Very. What is all this harping on intoxication?

The relationship between the people and their government troubled her. The government was the mission of an entire society: why was the society undermining it? “I’m routinely appalled by how profoundly ignorant even highly educated people are when it comes to the structure and function of our government,” she said. “The sense of identity as Citizen has been replaced by Consumer. The idea that government should serve the citizens like a waiter or concierge, rather than in a ‘collective good’ sense.

The sense of identity as Citizen has been replaced by Consumer. The idea that government should serve the citizens like a waiter or concierge, rather than in a ‘collective good’ sense.

Over the years Jim had heard, and more often overheard, objections to the Program’s expanding practice: Many people who worked and paid taxes struggled to pay for health insurance. Why should their money go to providing what some would consider concierge medicine for these people who lived at public expense? For people who produced nothing except indecent public spectacles, and didn’t even try to take care of themselves? Heard from inside a shelter clinic or McInnis House or out on the van, such protests seemed irrelevant. What was the alternative? Ignore chronically homeless people, as the city used to do, or imitate draconian regimes and imprison all rough sleepers in a stadium? In fact, the Program lightened the burdens that homeless people placed on other medical organizations, and did so while providing good care at lower cost than in hospital emergency departments.

Truth loves nothing better than simplicity of truth: that is the lesson Columbe Josse ought to have learned from her medieval readings. But all she seems to have gleaned from her studies is how to make a conceptual fuss in the service of nothing. It is a sort of endless loop, and also a shameless waste of resources, including the courier and my own self. . . . Granted, the young woman has a fairly efficient way with words, despite her youth. But the fact that the middle classes are working themselves to the bone, using their sweat and taxes to finance such pointless and pretentious research leaves me speechless. Every gray morning, day after gloomy day, secretaries, craftsmen, employees, petty civil servants, taxi drivers and concierges shoulder their burdens so that the flower of French youth, duly housed and subsidized, can squander the fruit of all that dreariness upon the altar of ridiculous endeavors . . . Should you devote your time to teaching, to producing a body of work, to research, to culture? It makes no difference. The only thing that matters is your intention: are you elevating thought and contributing to the common good, or rather joining the ranks in the field of study whose only purpose is its own perpetuation, and only function the self-reproduction of the elite - for this turns the University into a sect.

Truth loves nothing better than simplicity of truth: that is the lesson Columbe Josse ought to have learned from her medieval readings. But all she seems to have gleaned from her studies is how to make a conceptual fuss in the service of nothing. It is a sort of endless loop, and also a shameless waste of resources, including the courier and my own self. . . . Granted, the young woman has a fairly efficient way with words, despite her youth. But the fact that the middle classes are working themselves to the bone, using their sweat and taxes to finance such pointless and pretentious research leaves me speechless. Every gray morning, day after gloomy day, secretaries, craftsmen, employees, petty civil servants, taxi drivers and concierges shoulder their burdens so that the flower of French youth, duly housed and subsidized, can squander the fruit of all that dreariness upon the altar of ridiculous endeavors . . . Should you devote your time to teaching, to producing a body of work, to research, to culture? It makes no difference. The only thing that matters is your intention: are you elevating thought and contributing to the common good, or rather joining the ranks in the field of study whose only purpose is its own perpetuation, and only function the self-reproduction of the elite - for this turns the University into a sect.

Ezra asked me to bring you this,' I said and handed him the jar. 'He said you would know what it was.' He took the jar and looked at it. Then he threw it at me. It struck me on the chest or the shoulder and rolled down the stairs. 'You son of a bitch,' he said. 'You bastard.' 'Ezra said you might need it,' I said. He countered that by throwing a milk bottle. 'You are sure you don't need it?' I asked. He threw another milk bottle. I retreated and he hit me with yet another milk bottle in the back. Then he shut the door. I picked up the jar which was only slightly cracked and put it in my pocket. 'He did not seem to want the gift of Monsieur Pound," I said to the concierge. 'Perhaps he will be tranquil now,' she said. 'Perhaps he has some of his own,' I said. 'Poor Monsieur Dunning,' she said. The lovers of poetry that Ezra organized rallied to Dunning's aid again eventually. My own intervention and that of the concierge had been unsuccessful. The jar of alleged opium which had been cracked I stored wrapped in waxed paper and carefully tied in one of an old pair of riding boots. When Evan Shipman and I were removing my personal effects from that apartment some years later the boots were still there but the jar was gone. I do not know why Dunning threw the milk bottles at me unless he remembered my lack of credulity the night of his first dying, or whether it was only an innate dislike of my personality. But I remember the happiness that the phrase 'Monsieur Dunning est monté sur le toit et refuse catégoriquement de descendre' gave to Evan Shipman. He believed there was something symbolic about it. I would not know. Perhaps Dunning took me for an agent of evil or of the police. I only know that Ezra tried to be kind to Dunning as he was kind to so many people and I always hoped Dunning was as fine a poet as Ezra believed him to be. For a poet he threw a very accurate milk bottle. But Ezra, who was a very good poet, played a good game of tennis too. Evan Shipman, who was a very fine poet and who truly did not care if his poems were ever published, felt that it should remain a mystery. 'We need more true mystery in our lives, Hem,' he once said to me. 'The completely unambitious writer and the really good unpublished poem are the things we lack most at this time. There is, of course, the problem of sustenance.

The concierge, before she became a concierge, had owned a drink-selling concession at the Paris race-courses. Her life-work lay in the pelouse, but she kept an eye on the people of the pesage, and she took great pride in telling me which of my guests were well brought up, which were of good family, who were sportsmen, a French word pronounced with the accent on the men. The only trouble was that people who did not fall into any of those three cat-egories were very liable to be told there was no one home, chez Barnes. One of my friends, an extremely underfed-looking painter, who was obviously to Madame Duzinell neither well brought up, of good family, nor a sportsman, wrote me a letter asking if I could get him a pass to get by the concierge so he could come up and see me occasionally in the evenings.

That same day we drove to Seville to celebrate. I asked someone for the name of the smartest hotel in Seville. Alfonso XIII, came the reply. It is where the King of Spain always stays. We found the hotel and wandered in. It was amazing. Shara was a little embarrassed as I was dressed in shorts and an old holey jersey, but I sought out a friendly-looking receptionist and told her our story. “Could you help us out? I have hardly any money.” She looked us up and down, paused--then smiled. “Just don’t tell my manager,” she whispered. So we stayed in a $1,000-a-night room for $100 and celebrated--like the King of Spain. The next morning we went on a hunt for a ring. I asked the concierge in my best university Spanish where I would find a good (aka well-priced) jeweler. He looked a little surprised. I tried speaking slower. Eventually I realized that I had actually been asking him where I might find a good mustache shop. I apologized that my Spanish was a little rusty. Shara rolled her eyes again, smiling. When we eventually found a small local jeweler, I had to do some nifty subcounter mathematics, swiftly converting Spanish pesetas into British pounds, to work out whether or not I could afford each ring Shara tried on. We eventually settled on one that was simple, beautiful--and affordable. Just. Love doesn’t require expensive jewelry. And Shara has always been able to make the simple look exquisite. Luckily.

That’s where the shouts and yells of the twenty houses round about crash and rebound, even the cries of the concierges’ little birds, rotting away as they pipe for the spring they will never see in their cages beside the privies, which are all clustered together out at the dark end with their ill-fitting, banging doors. A hundred male and female drunks inhabit those bricks and feed the echoes with their boasting quarrels and muddled, eruptive oaths, especially after lunch on a Saturday. That’s the intense moment in family life. Shouts of defiance as the drink pours down. Papa is brandishing a chair, a sight worth seeing, like an axe, and Mama a log like a sabre! Heaven help the weak! It’s the kid who suffers. Anyone unable to defend himself or fight back – children, dogs and cats – is flattened against the wall. After the third glass of wine, the black kind, the worst, it’s the dog’s turn, Papa stamps on his paw. That’ll teach him to be hungry at the same time as people. It’s good for a laugh when he crawls under the bed, whimpering for all he’s worth. That’s the signal. Nothing arouses a drunken woman so much as an animal in pain, and bulls aren’t always handy. The argument starts up again, vindictive, compulsive, delirious, the wife takes the lead, hurling shrill calls to battle at the male. Then comes the mêlée, the smash-up. The uproar descends on the court, the echo swirls through the half-darkness. The children yap with horror. They’ve found out what Mama and Papa have in them! Their yells draw down parental thunders.

As we had agreed, I met Jack downstairs in the lobby. I was a few minutes late, having lingered to give a few last-minute instructions to Teena. “Sorry.” I quickened my stride as I walked toward Jack, who was standing by the concierge desk. “I didn’t mean to be late.” “It’s fine,” Jack said. “We still have plenty of—” He broke off as he got a good look at me, his jaw slackening. Self-consciously I reached up and tucked a lock of my hair behind my right ear. I was wearing a slim-fitting black suit made of summer-weight wool, and black high-heeled pumps with delicate straps that crossed over the front. I had put on some light makeup: shimmery brown eye shadow, a coat of black mascara, a touch of pink blush, and lip gloss. “Do I look okay?” I asked. Jack nodded, his gaze unblinking. I bit back a grin, realizing he had never seen me dressed up before. And the suit was flattering, cut to show my curves to advantage. “I thought this was more appropriate for church than jeans and Birkenstocks.” I wasn’t certain Jack heard me. It looked like his mind was working on another track altogether. My suspicion was confirmed when he said fervently, “You have amazing legs.” “Thanks.” I gave a modest shrug. “Yoga.” That appeared to set off another round of thoughts. I thought Jack’s color seemed a little high, although it was difficult to tell with that rosewood tan. His voice sounded strained as he asked, “I guess you’re pretty flexible?” “I wasn’t the most flexible in class by any means,” I said, pausing before adding demurely, “but I can put my ankles behind my head.” I repressed a grin when I heard a hitch in his breathing. Seeing that his SUV was out in front, I walked past him. He was at my heels immediately. -Ella & Jack

Aristotle very famously said in his Politics I.V.8 that some people are born to be slaves. He meant that some people are not as capable of higher rational thought and therefore should do the work that frees the more talented and brilliant to pursue a life of honor and culture. Modern people bristle with outrage at such a statement, but while we do not today hold with the idea of literal slavery, the attitudes behind Aristotle’s statement are alive and well. Christian philosopher Lee Hardy and many others have argued that this “Greek attitude toward work and its place in human life was largely preserved in both the thought and practice of the Christian church” through the centuries, and still holds a great deal of influence today in our culture.43 What has come down to us is a set of pervasive ideas. One is that work is a necessary evil. The only good work, in this view, is work that helps make us money so that we can support our families and pay others to do menial work. Second, we believe that lower-status or lower-paying work is an assault on our dignity. One result of this belief is that many people take jobs that they are not suited for at all, choosing to aim for careers that do not fit their gifts but promise higher wages and prestige. Western societies are increasingly divided between the highly remunerated “knowledge classes” and the more poorly remunerated “service sector,” and most of us accept and perpetuate the value judgments that attach to these categories. Another result is that many people will choose to be unemployed rather than do work that they feel is beneath them, and most service and manual labor falls into this category. Often people who have made it into the knowledge classes show great disdain for the concierges, handymen, dry cleaners, cooks, gardeners, and others who hold service jobs.

While in Kolkata, India, for this book, I stayed at the iconic Oberoi Grand. The concierge explained to me the hotel’s hiring philosophy: “You can’t bend mature bamboo. But if you get it as a young shoot, you can bend it, mold it. We hire them between the ages of 18 and 21 so we can mold them.” The concierge was one of only 15 double golden key (Clef d’Or) concierges in India, and he knew that sometimes having no experience is a huge advantage. Age doesn’t matter; an open mind does.

I watch myself in the mirrored walls, veiled, slide down to sit on the floor and dial the reception planner. “Checking to make sure you’ve arranged a place card and seat for Simone.” “Yes,” she says. “I’ve put her with the table you’ve labeled ‘one-offs.’” “Perfect.” I hang up. The doors slide open. The concierge’s voice trails me out of the elevator. “I’ve heard it’s good luck to say a rosary on the morning of your wedding. I have one at my desk if you…” Minutes down the tree-lined road, the groom is being mimosa-toasted in his aunt Henshaw’s home. The cake is in the shape of the lake. In the morning we’ll return to the city. Alone in the room, I switch the channel to a newscast and slide under the folded coverlet. From the shelf of sleep, I hear local news stories. Henrietta has opened a store during an unfriendly economic climate. Despite everyone’s predictions, she is doing well. In global news, in towns around the world, people prepare for different holidays amid varied architecture.

The concierge was one of only 15 double golden key (Clef d’Or) concierges in India, and he knew that sometimes having no experience is a huge advantage. Age doesn’t matter; an open mind does.

identity as Citizen has been replaced by Consumer. The idea that government should serve the citizens like a waiter or concierge, rather than in a ‘collective good’ sense.

Fine, maybe you’re a bit of a Neanderthal when it comes to relationships. You’re not perfect. Great. I get it. But, Ghost, you are romantic.” When Ghost began to shake his head in denial, or disgust, Rayne wasn’t sure which, she put her hand on his knee. “Let me finish.” Waiting until he finally nodded, she continued. “You’ve paid for every single thing we’ve done today, from the taxi, to lunch, to tipping the concierge at the hotel. When we were walking to the subway station, you put yourself between the traffic and me when we were on the sidewalk. You protected me from the crowds as we got in and out of the subway. You let me sit, while you stood near me, making sure no one got too close. You even carried my suitcase from the taxi to the hotel. Seriously, Ghost, you do these things and don’t even realize you’re doing them. That is a sign of a man who knows how to treat a woman. That’s what women think is romantic. Screw flowers, they’ll just die sooner rather than later. And even if you leave without saying goodbye to a woman, I’ll bet everything I own you take very good care of her before you take off…don’t you?

New Orleans restaurants are so good, you'll want to slap your momma, you neighbor's momma, and your neighbor's momma's momma.