Joan Stewart Smith

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Joan Stewart is Currently Reading

Joan Stewart Smith is currently reading

Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste and Her Missing Crew

by Brian Hicks

bookshelves: historical-fiction, maritime, currently-reading

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Apr 21, 2026 08:30PM

Joan Stewart’s Notes & Highlights

The Library Book by Susan Orlean

2 highlights

This building made the permanence of libraries feel forsaken. This was a shrine to being forgotten; to memories sprinkled like salt; ideas vaporized as if they never had been formed; stories evaporated as if they had no substance and no ...more

Eric Warren liked this

08 Jun 20 · Flag

Joan Stewart Smith

This quote is referring to the vacant, boarded up and fenced in old Washington Irving Branch Library, 1803 South Arlington Avenue. Built in 1926, architects were Allison & Allison. The new Washington …

Joan Stewart’s Quotes

“I've found that there is always some beauty left -- in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself; these can all help you.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

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“poem by her friend Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the longtime editor of the Atlantic Monthly. Its lines read like a brace against failure: “Build as thou will—unspoiled by praise or blame / Build as thou will; and as thy light is given / Then if at last the airy structure fall / Divide & vanish—Take thyself no shame—/ They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.”
― Natalie Dykstra, Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner

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