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“Books show us what it is like to be another and at the same time return us to ourselves. We read to learn how to live — how to love and how to suffer, how to grieve and how to be glad. We read to clarify ourselves and to anneal our values. We read for the assurance that others have lived through what we are living through. “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read,” James Baldwin reflected in his most personal interview.
And yet while books may give us a foothold for the disorientation of being and an antidote to our existential loneliness, the paradox of living is that no example, no parallel, no borrowed wisdom is a substitute for life itself. The story of our own lives is only ever written on the blank page of living, our store of wisdom only ever found in the deepening truth of our own experience.”
―
And yet while books may give us a foothold for the disorientation of being and an antidote to our existential loneliness, the paradox of living is that no example, no parallel, no borrowed wisdom is a substitute for life itself. The story of our own lives is only ever written on the blank page of living, our store of wisdom only ever found in the deepening truth of our own experience.”
―
“Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.”
― The Making of a Mind: Letters From a Soldier-Priest 1914-1919
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.”
― The Making of a Mind: Letters From a Soldier-Priest 1914-1919
Adèle’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Adèle’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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