June Commonplace
A place for us to share some tidbits from our commonplace books!
Welcome to Reading Revisited, a place for friends to enjoy some good old-fashioned book chat while revisiting the truth, beauty, and goodness we’ve found in our favorite books.
Kelsie
“Knowledge is merely knowing that certain things are, but wisdom is knowing how the souls of things rhyme with each other.”
-Joshua Gibbs, Something They Will Not Forget
“A well crafted novel is often superior to any other kind of reading, because change occurs first in our imaginations.”
-Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood….
I think (apparently I forgot a citation here…)
“We quarreled because we loved each other, I have no doubt of that. We were trying to become somehow the same person, one flesh, and we often failed…It’s not a simple thing, this love.”
-Hannah…I mean Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter
Jess
“For this thin glitter of glass everywhere is the expression of the fact that happiness is bright but brittle, like the substance most easily smashed by a housemaid or a cat…Remember, however, that to be breakable is not the same as to be perishable. Strike a glass, and it will not endure an instant; simply do not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years…Happiness depended on not doing something.”
-G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“Marriage is a duel to the death, which no man of honour should decline.”
-G.K. Chesterton’s character Michael Moon, from Manalive
“Life, dear friends, is the open hand - death, the same hand closed.”
-Leon Bloy’s character Clotilde, from The Woman Who Was Poor
“Sudden insight into the structure of one’s own soul can come on one like the eruption of a volcano.”
-Sigrid Undset, St. Catherine of Siena
Hannah
“the world is eaten up by boredom. To perceive this needs a little preliminary thought: you can’t see it all at once. It is like dust. You go about and never notice, you breathe it in, you eat and drink it. It is often so fine, it doesn’t even grit your teeth. But stand still for an instant and there it is, coating your face and hands. To shake off this drizzle of ashes you must be forever on the go. And so, people are always “on the go.”
-Georges Bernanos, Diary of a Country Priest
“I still preserve those relics of past sufferings and experience, like pillars of witness set up in traveling through the valve of life, to mark particular occurrences.”
-Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey
“Aslan is a lion - the Lion, the great Lion.”
“Ooh, said Susan, I’d thought he was a man. Is he - quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion…”
“Safe? said Mr. Beaver…”Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
-C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe
We would love to hear some of your favorite quotes from your reading this month!
In Case You Missed It
Reading Revisited ep. 2: What We’re Reading- June 2024 with and
The Remains of the Day-Final Thoughts (and discussion questions) by
A Few Reminders
If you are wanting to get in on the in person or virtual community please contact us!
Book lists from previous years can be found here.
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Ah I love Middlemarch!! We read that for the Book Club back in Feb-March and I loved it even more on a second read. It’s one of those books that makes me understand my humanity more for having read it!
I love this idea so much, thanks for this post!
This month I finished Middlemarch. Here were some of my favorite quotes:
"The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quiet masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character."
"He was one of those rare men who are rigid to themselves and indulgent to others. He had a certain shame about his neighbor's errors, and never spoke of them willingly."
"She had that rare sense which discerns what is unalterable, and submits to it without murmuring."
"I believe that people are almost always better than their neighbors think they are."
"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?"