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Yet it is in the very dailiness, the exhaustive, repetitious dailiness, that the real power of Martha Ballard’s book lies. To extract the river crossings without noting the cold days spent “footing” stockings, to abstract the births without
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“Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.”
― Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series
― Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
― The Fire Next Time
― The Fire Next Time
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
― Giovanni’s Room
― Giovanni’s Room
“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
― War and Peace
― War and Peace
“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
― Wuthering Heights
― Wuthering Heights
Soph’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Soph’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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