"Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers."
"That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive--all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment." Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows "Imagine that you are reading a fairy tale. Here's a cocky young prince on his way to kill some monster who guards the water of life. The prince stops to eat his lunch in the shade by a brook. A loathsome frog asks for a bite of his sandwich but the hero will not lower himself to sup with a slimy amphibian and says so in as many words. Well, there 's no doubt. He's going to come to a bad end. When his younger brother comes by next year, however, he'll be glad to give that frog bites of his peanut butter sandwich, a little Kool-Aid, and even some polite chit-chat. You can just bet that that boy will bring back not only the water of life but a comely princess as well.
Behind this common theme lies the suspicion that the palpable world we see before us conceals other worlds from our view. What inklings we have of those worlds we have in the suggestions of our language, and it is in our language that we have access to those worlds." Richard Mitchell, Less Than Words Can Say "How much virtue there is in simply seeing." Thoreau
"Language is the medium in which we are conscious. The speechless beasts are aware, but they are not conscious. To be conscious is to 'know with' something, and a language of some sort is the device with which we know. More precisely, it is the device with which we can know."
Richard Mitchell About his boyhood reading, Frederick Buechner says,
"Nothing was more remote from my thought at this period than theological speculation--except Greene's (Graham), these books were all childhood or early boyhood reading--but certain patterns were set, certain rooms were made ready, so that when, years later, I came upon Saint Paul for the first time and heard him say, 'God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,' I had the feeling that i knew something of what he was talking about. Something of the divine comedy that we are all of us involved in. Something of Grace." "If I tell you the answer, you will forget it. But if you find out for yourself, you will always remember."
Natalie Savage Carlson "It is always shocking to meet life where we thought we were alone. 'Look out! we cry, 'It's alive.' And therefore this is the very point at which so many draw back...and proceed no further with Christianity. An 'impersonal God'--well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads,--better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap--best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, husband--that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion ('Man's Search for God!') suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?"
C.S. Lewis “I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.”
e. e. cummings "Reading and writing were like magic, and the people who knew their secrets as rare as wizards"
Don Brown, Across a Dark and Wild Sea |
"Ideas
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A wee explanation: this website was created as a way to amplify the daily surprise of seeing glory in one small life. The notebook entries represented here are all selected from things actually lived and noted on paper in an effort to live the full life British educator Charlotte Mason so ably championed.
All
Book Of Centuries
Book Of Firsts
Church Year
Commonplace
Copywork
Enquire Within
Fortitude Journal
Gratitude Journal
Keeping
Music Notebook
Nature Notebook
Notebooks
Picture File
Poetry
Prayer Journal
Recipes
Zeitgeist