“Could beauty be caught and hurtthey had done her to death with their sneersin ages and ages past,could beauty be sacrificedfor a thrust of a sword,for a piece of thin moneytossed up to fall half alloy—then beauty were deadlong, long before we saw her face.”

“In old age her voice had become thin as a bird's, but her reading was still beautiful to him.”

“How had I become middle-aged while the ravages of time ignored her? I didn't know and didn't care, and before I could stop them, the words were already out. "You're beautiful," I murmured.”

“Although Pulcheria Alexandrovna was forty-three, her face still retained traces of her former beauty; she looked much younger than her age, indeed, which is almost always the case with women who retain serenity of spirit, sensitiveness and pure sincere warmth of heart to old age. We may add in parenthesis that to preserve all this is the only means of retaining beauty to old age.”

“Beautiful. He'd called her beautiful. Nobody had ever called her that before, except her mother, which didn't count. Mothers were required to think you were beautiful.”

“She was beautiful, but her youth, the very awkwardness of her age, prevented her from flaunting it.”