Carrie

“Librarianship was not just a job for her, but her tikkun olam, the Hebrew phrase for “repairing the world.”
― Kate Stewart, A Well-Read Woman: The Life, Loves, and Legacy of Ruth Rappaport

“Ruth, just ten years old at the time, heard that it was happening. She set out to see it for herself and described the heaps of books set on fire in the road. She was stunned to see this happening in her hometown, the world-famous city of books, and did everything in her might to not cry as she passed by and watched.”
― Kate Stewart, A Well-Read Woman: The Life, Loves, and Legacy of Ruth Rappaport

“When asked which authors were her favorites as a teenager, she replied: “Everybody who was forbidden: Lion Feuchtwanger, Max Brod, Leon Trotsky . . . and what we did was we passed around the paperbacks. We read them, and as we finished reading, we tore up the pages and destroyed them so we wouldn’t get caught.”
― Kate Stewart, A Well-Read Woman: The Life, Loves, and Legacy of Ruth Rappaport

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work—as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for— the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?

—But it’s nicer here. . . .

So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?

—But we have to sleep sometime. . . .

Agreed. But nature set a limit on that—as it did on eating and drinking. And you’re over the limit. You’ve had more than enough of that. But not of working. There you’re still below your quota.

You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat. Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving, the dancer for the dance, the miser for money or the social climber for status? When they’re really possessed by what they do, they’d rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts.

Is helping others less valuable to you? Not worth your effort?”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations