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Amelia Smith
https://www.goodreads.com/dolphinfeathers
“Sometimes the desire to be lost again, as long ago, comes over me like a vapor. With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many heavy coats. I didn’t choose them, I don’t fault them, but it took time to reject them. Now in the spring I kneel, I put my face into the packets of violets, the dampness, the freshness, the sense of ever-ness. Something is wrong, I know it, if I don’t keep my attention on eternity. May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful. May I stay forever in the stream. May I look down upon the windflower and the bull thistle and the coreopsis with the greatest respect.”
― Upstream: Selected Essays
― Upstream: Selected Essays
“Between any two beings there is a unique, uncrossable distance, an unenterable sanctuary. Sometimes it takes the shape of aloneness. Sometimes it takes the shape of love.”
― Here I Am
― Here I Am
“We are sorry, we are sorry.
Sorry you were caught, I said. Sorry that you thought I was weak, but you were wrong.”
― Circe
Sorry you were caught, I said. Sorry that you thought I was weak, but you were wrong.”
― Circe
“Sol Weintraub suddenly understood perfectly why Abraham had agreed to sacrifice Isaac, his son, when the Lord commanded him to do so. It was not obedience. It was not even to put the love of God above the love of his son. Abraham was testing God. By denying the sacrifice at the last moment, by stopping the knife, God had earned the right—in Abraham’s eyes and the hearts of his offspring—to become the God of Abraham. Sol”
― The Fall of Hyperion
― The Fall of Hyperion
“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”
― Upstream: Selected Essays
― Upstream: Selected Essays
IWU Quarterly Classic
— 6 members
— last activity Dec 17, 2015 10:14PM
A classics book club for Illinois Wesleyan University students and alums.
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