October Commonplace
in which we 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.
Happy Friday Readers,
Kelsie here! I hope you are making it to the end of the week with enough energy to finish strong and looking forward to some good leisure over the weekend. If you missed it,
’s essay on Acedia and Leisure last Friday was wonderful and it would be a great read to finish your week and start your weekend.Today we are here with some of our favorite quotes from our collective commonplaces over the past month. I hope you find some inspiration for your weekend reading here. If you aren’t sure what commonplacing is or why or how you should implement it into your reading life, check out this podcast we did with
on the topic!We would also love to hear what quotes are resonating with you this month, so please share in the comments as well!
Kelsie
“The captivation of evil is on par with a cheap parlor trick in comparison with the awesome, fascinating wonderment of the Good.” -Fr. Thomas Edmund Gilroy
-Eleanor Bourg Nicholson (A Bloody Habit, 324)
“Under the glitter of their opportunities she saw the poverty of their achievement.” (about Lily Bart)
-Edith Wharton (The House of Mirth, 74)
“Sometimes, when I was a young, married woman, I longed to be freed- free of nursery chores and social obligations, one’s duty, d’you know? And free of worries, too, about one’s loved ones- childish ailments and ageing parents, money troubles, everyone at times feels the longing- to run away from it all. But it’s really not to be desired- and to realise that that’s the only way of being free- to not be needed….And there’s no one I know who could ever be a burden to me now.”- Mrs. Palfrey
-Elizabeth Taylor (Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, 92)
Jessica
“Then did I grieve and now I grieve again
when I direct my mind to what I saw,
and hold my genius under tighter rein
Lest without virtue’s guidance it run loose:
that if my stars, or grace, has given me good,
I won’t begrudge myself its abuse.”-Dante, Inferno 26.19-24 (Esolen translation)
“God, says Scripture, is the Potter—and we know what that makes us. Pride whispers otherwise.”
-Anthony Esolen, endnote to Inferno 13
“The human person is an agent of truth, and one of the most important ways in which the human person seeks truth is through the arts. The enjoyment we experience…is not merely emotional…It is above all a joy in the mind’s coming better to understand…the nature of the human predicament. The arts…are forms of inquiry, of investigation, as the beauty we find in them illumines the truth about ourselves.”
Hannah
“Every human love, at its height, has a tendency to claim for itself a divine authority. Its voice tends to sound as if it were the will of God Himself. It tells us not to count the cost, it demands of us a total commitment, it attempts to over-ride all other claims and insinuates that any action which is sincerely done “for love’s sake” is thereby lawful and even meritorious.”
-C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
“A well-informed mind is the best security against the contagion of folly and vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness. Store it with ideas, teach it the pleasure of thinking; and the temptations of the world without, will be counteracted by the gratifications derived from the world within.”
-Ann Radcliffe, St. Aubert from The Mysteries of Udolpho
“He knew that he was the stuff of which fanatics and madmen are made and that he had turned his destiny as if with his bare will. He kept himself upright on a very narrow line between madness and emptiness and when the time came for him to lose his balance he intended to lurch toward emptiness and fall on the side of his choice.”
- Flannery O’Connor, The Violent Bear it Away
What quotes have you been mediating on this month?
Until next time, keep revisiting the good books that enrich your life and nourish your soul.
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Love that quote from The Mysteries of Udolpho…that on is on my list of books to read in 2025!