JennanneJ’s Reviews > West with the Night > Status Update

“If a man has any greatness in him, it comes to light, not in one flamboyant hour, but in the ledger of his daily work. I saw the ledger written. “

"You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself. You learn to watch other people, but you never watch yourself because you strive against loneliness. If you read a book, or shuffle a deck of cards, or care for a dog, you are avoiding yourself. The abhorrence of loneliness is as natural as wanting to live at all."

"Here is your map. Unfold it, follow it, then throw it away, if you will. It is only paper. It is only paper and ink, but if you think a little, if you pause a moment, You will see that these two things have seldom joined to make a document so modest and yet so full with histories of hope or sagas of conquest."

"All this, and discontent too! Otherwise, why am I sitting here dreaming of England? Why am I gazing at this campfire like a lost soul seeking a hope with all that I love is at my wingtips? Because I am curious. Because I am incorrigibly, now, a wanderer."

"A life has to move or it stagnates. Even this life, I think."

".... Never hope more than you work."

“I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved ... leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance. The cloud clears as you enter it."