“It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they come from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them — with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them …”
― Eudora Welty, One Writer’s Beginnings
Lady Clementina Hawarden
Lady Clementina’s daughter, also called Clementina
1860s
“Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.”
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. (Wikipedia)
“He had been for many years, a quiet silent man, associating but little with other men, and used to companionship with his own thoughts. He had never known before the strength of the want in his heart for the frequent recognition of a nod, a look, a word; or the immense amount of relief that had been poured into it by drops through such small means.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times
Burghers of Calais (detail)
Auguste Rodin.
