Tag Archives: books
The jangled soul can flee
‘Tis fitting in these days of noise, Here in these thunder years of steam, The soul should keep its equipoise And think its thoughts and dream its dream. We scar the placid vales with mills, We scoop the seas and shear the hills: ‘Tis well that to these temples of the mind The jangled soul …
Conversation partners
“The borders between reading and writing and living are fluid. I do not take time out from life to write, nor do I take time out from life to read. When I quote somebody, I’m not hiding. I’m introducing you to one of my conversation partners.” — Patrick Henry (no, not that one, this one) …
Nourishment
“There is nourishment in books, art, history, philosophies—in holiness and in mirth. It is in honest hands-on labor…And it is in the green world—among people, and animals, and trees for that matter, if one genuinely cares about trees.” —Mary Oliver Do you pay as much attention to your psychological nourishment as you do to …
On gray days
“On gray days, when it’s snowing or raining, I think you should be able to call up a judge and take an oath that you’ll just read a good book all day, and he’d allow you to stay home.” ― Bill Watterson In the winter it’s so easy to become gloomy and depressed. Not surprisingly, I’ve had …
Strangers old and new
“Wherever I’ve lived my room and soon the entire house is filled with books; poems, stories, histories, prayers of all kinds stand up gracefully or are heaped on shelves, on the floor, on the bed. Strangers old and new offering their words bountifully and thoughtfully, lifting my heart. But, wait! I’ve made a mistake! how …
The quickening pollen
“Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.” ― James Russell Lowell If you suffer from seasonal allergies, the term “quickening pollen” might not sound like a good thing. But in the sense that Lowell intended it, the concept is quite exciting. Suppose you could somehow time travel to have …
The patient seamstress
“Faith is the patient seamstress who mends our torn belief, who sews the hem of childhood trust and clips the threads of grief.” — Joan Walsh Anglund I think this poem captures the essence of how faith operates in most lives. Some claim to have had …
The transporting wonder
“Those of us who know the transporting wonder of a reading life know that…when we read, we are always inside, sheltered in that interior room, that clean, well-lighted, timeless place that is the written word.” – Alice McDermott All of my life, reading has been a shelter for me, and never more so than in …
A pathological nostalgia
“I had a pathological nostalgia. I grieved not only for my own rapidly receding childhood but also for the years, ‘the pasts,’ that I would never experience. The past seemed as real to me as the present, as real as another country. But unlike another country, its borders were closed…pictures felt like the next best …
Endless, incredible loot
“The richest person in the world – in fact, all the riches in the world – couldn’t provide you with anything like the endless, incredible loot available at your local library. You can measure the awareness, the breadth and the wisdom of a civilization, a nation, a people by the priority given to preserving these …
Books break the shackles
“One glance at [a book] and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one …
At the mere sight
“Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.” ― Jane Smiley I was quite a few years into adulthood before I realized that the mere presence of books was a comfort to me, even if I didn’t reach out and take one from the shelf. This seemed a bit …
No faster or firmer friendships
“There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.” ― Irving Stone OK, think of how to describe the friend of your dreams. The best friend you can imagine. First, and this is a big one – someone who lives close enough that you can get to …
The articulate audible voice
“In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time: the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.” — Thomas Carlyle There’s at least one realm where the past, present and future really do co-exist, and that is in the world of …
Open arms
“A library should be like a pair of open arms.” ― Roger Rosenblatt “So why on earth would you take an eight-month-old baby to a library?” my mother asked me, when I told her how Matt and I had spent the previous day with Grady. As a retired librarian who specialized in youth services, I …
Read or learned or picked up
“One of the great joys of being a librarian is that it is the last refuge of the renaissance person — everything you have ever read or learned or picked up is likely to come in handy.” — GraceAnne DeCandido Sometimes I think the term “renaissance person” is too loosely used in the modern sense, …
The beautiful stillness
“Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author’s words reverberating in your head.” ― Paul Auster Even when life is the craziest and most chaotic, I always read myself to sleep …
If you look
“If you look at an illuminated manuscript, even today, it just blows your mind. For them, without all the clutter and inputs that we have, it must have been even more extraordinary.” — Geraldine Brooks I started reading aloud to our sons when they were babies, and kept it up nightly until they were in …
What really knocks me out
“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.” — J. D. Salinger Who comes to mind when you read this quote? …
A garden and a library
“He who has a garden and a library wants for nothing.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero Several weeks ago one of our readers sent me this quote, and I immediately thought “That would make a great post for the blog.” What makes the quote so appealing is that most people can have at least a small library and …
Defeat Despair 