"He knows you by name." - IS 43:1

Jiang threw his head back and laughed.
  It was a high, wild laugh. He laughed like his lungs were bellows. He laughed like he was nothing human. He spread his arms out and windmilled them in the air, and danced with giddy abandon.
  "You darling child," he said, spinning towards her. "You brilliant child."
  Rin's face split into a grin.

  Fuck it, she though, and leaped up to embrace him.
  He picked her up and swung her through the air, around and around among the kaleidoscopically colorful mushrooms. - The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang

I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases. (Song 2:7 ESV)

"[...] There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live, undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly." - The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

    "It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion."

"I know you will laugh at me," he replied,     "but I really can't exhibit it. I have put too much of myself into it."

Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed.

"Yes, I knew you would; but it is quite true, all the same."

"Too much of yourself in it! I Upon my word, Basil, I didn't know you were so vain; and I really can't see any resemblance between you, with your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you well, of course you have an Intellectual expression, and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. - The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

"You see that rough surrounding stone? You can polish it all you want, but it'll still be worthless. But there might be something much more valuable inside that you can't yet see.

You're wonderful. There's no need to rush. Please take your time to polish your talent." - Mimi wo Sumaseba (Whisper of the Heart)

the sea no longer torments me; the self I wished to be is the self I am. - Louise Gluck, from "Otis", Poems 1962

He saw her bow low to a young child and thought her less than a child. Had he never allowed a child to ride on his shoulders? Even she, a civillian woman, had set young children on her shoulders as an adolescent, allowed toddlers to rise high and look out at the world from greater height than their own short legs could give them.

For all that she had given up her reputation to move into the Uchiha Compound, bowing to Uchiha-sama didn't make her low, it allowed her to raise him high. - Doing the Work on ao3 by MarbleGLove

"Yes. A choice that doesn't have repercussions is hardly a choice at all."