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“He joined the ranks of the great uprooted, but educated, English middle class. He suspected, rightly, that his old friends thought him a ‘snob’. But he made new friends, middle-class ones, who read books and did middle-class things like climbing, walking and daydreaming of adventures in foreign lands. But you can’t help feeling that he was always a little isolated in his new world, never quite fitting in – a little lonely, his cleverness like a millstone around his neck.”
― James Rebanks, The Shepherd's Life: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape

“Thinking has, many a time, made me sad, darling; but doing never did in all my life... My precept is, "Do something, my sister, do good if you can; but, at any rate, do something".”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“I was discovering something about the wider world—that you could shape your own fate to a much greater degree than I’d ever experienced. If you read more, worked harder, thought things through smartly, or wrote or argued better than other people, you won. For a while I found this newfound freedom quite exciting and liberating. I found it a bit of a buzz just to be good at something, something that was nothing to do with my family or our farm, or anyone else except me.”
― James Rebanks, The Shepherd's Life: A People's History of the Lake District

“We all have two lives. The second one starts when we realize that we only have one.”
― Tom Hiddleston