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“I think you will come to Balzac yet. When one has disproved all one’s theories, outgrown all of one’s standards, discarded all one’s criterions, and left off minding about one’s appearance, one comes to Balzac. And there he is, waiting outside his canvas tent—with such a circus going on inside.”
― The Element of Lavishness: Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner & William Maxwell, 1938-1978
― The Element of Lavishness: Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner & William Maxwell, 1938-1978
“This is how I spend my time. A eight o'clock, dark or light, I get up. I have my two cups of tea. Fair weather or foul, I open my window and take the air. Then I shut myself up and read...Those writers who can charm away our boredom, who ravish us from ourselves, whom nature has endowed with a magic wand which no sooner touches us than we forget our troubles and the light enters the dark places of the soul and we are reconciled to living - they are the only true benefactors of humanity.”
― Lettres à Sophie Volland
― Lettres à Sophie Volland
“There’s no doubt war is a proper subject for the philosopher, partly because it gives rise to some of the greatest and most important upheavals, and then for its connections with endless ramifications of the theories of society, man, and other living beings.”
― Passions
― Passions
“The childhood and youth of the Bakunins were passed in an atmosphere of fantasy, of tender emotions and intellectual excitement, which sounds like Turgenev or Chekhov.”
― To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History
― To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History
“He had in mind no scheme for a composition, but he was planning a literary career, after the manner of Gibbon, for which he proposed to lay a firm foundation. This was one of the solid Boston customs. As John Quincy Adams had laid a foundation for the statesman's life, based on blocks of good political granite, so Prescott put his blocks together, first clearing the ground with a thorough study of the English tongue. Let the suitable subject find him ready, even the suitable field of concentration. He had made up his mind that the age of thirty-five was soon enough to put pen to paper. English grammar first, as if he had never gone to school or college. For style, Sidney, Bacon, Browne and Milton. One hour a day for the Latin classics, Tacitus and Livy for elevation: he knew them by heart already, but this was a different matter. A year devoted to French, from Froissart to Chateaubriand. A year for Italian, another year for Spanish. There he paused, there he felt at home, too much at home to carry on with German. His eyes were not equal to the Gothic script.”
― The Flowering of New England, 1815-1865
― The Flowering of New England, 1815-1865
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