“How can one be well...when one suffers morally?”
― War and Peace
― War and Peace
“What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?”
― Middlemarch
― Middlemarch
“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.”
― Walden or, Life in the Woods
― Walden or, Life in the Woods
“How would you describe the difference between modern war and modern industry—between, say, bombing and strip mining, or between chemical warfare and chemical manufacturing? The difference seems to be only that in war the victimization of humans is directly intentional and in industry it is “accepted” as a “trade-off.”
― What Are People For?
― What Are People For?
“And having returned from the woods, we remember with regret its restfulness. For all creatures there are in place, hence at rest. In their most strenuous striving, sleeping and waking, dead and living, they are at rest. In the circle of the human we are weary with striving, and are without rest.”
― What Are People For?
― What Are People For?
Gretchen’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Gretchen’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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