“You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784
“Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.” Nora Ephron, 1942–2012
“Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come,
Whispering ‘it will be happier’…”Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1809–1892
“Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home! ” ~Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1836
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled down for a long winter’s nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.Clement C. Moore, 1779–1863
It’s Jane’s 236th birthday and yet her writing is still fresh and vibrant and has much to say to a more modern sensibility. In honor I am going to re-read Persuasion. Happy Birthday Jane Austen!
“Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.”
Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759–1797
“…a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.” (Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones) George R.R. Martin, born 1948
“O Day of days when we can read! The reader and the book, either without the other is naught.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803–1882
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“Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.” John Locke, 1632–1704
