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If God had made a woman before he made a man, that might've been the end of creation. A woman, used to having the run of the Garden, and all of its say-so to herself, might've raised Jesse with God if she'd been roused up one morning to find a rib missing, and a man there to spoil the quiet and mess up the neatness and to pounce on her in the one-flesh act.
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The mind needs room to turn around in, and when the future doesn't provide this dimension, one chooses of necessity whatever spaciousness the past affords.
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You travel to discover yourself. At home there is known to you only the girl you remember. Who you really have become, you do not know. When you travel, that person emerges: she is mirrored in the faces of people you meet.
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For love expended, one did not have to receive a return; as if love were a mortgage clapped onto the loved one and paying interest at an approved rate. Love expended, whether there were any returns or not, increased, within the loving heart, the store of love available.
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It is the loving, not the loved, woman who feels loveable.
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In my opinion the world has been steadily going downhill since the discovery of sugar.
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Asa had looked into the face of many a religious man without being able to detect a thing there except a lifelong satisfaction in eating fried chicken and talking about sin.
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A teaser is always asking for a response from somebody without having to take any responsibility for it.
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Nothing ruins a face so fast as double-dealing. Your face telling one story to the world. Your heart yanking your face to pieces, trying to let the truth be known. One eyelid'll hang down lower than the other, one side of your mouth'll stay stiff while the other smiles. I know a dozen cases like that.
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There were clearly two classes of people in the world: those for whom the world was magnified and enriched in words and those who could never find the beautiful world of their living and knowing on any sheet of paper.
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There is a hard clear rationality about Quakers — and, indeed, all mysticism, which, once experienced, makes other ways appear indirect, childish, and crude.
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Was Thoreau never lonely? Certainly. Where do you think writing like his comes from? Camaraderie?
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Abel was a dog poisoner. It sometimes works out that way. A man wants to have some direct connection with life. If he can't bring life into being, he'll put an end to it. In that way he's not completely powerless. Some men can start it. Others can end it.
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At fourteen you don't need sickness or death for tragedy.
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His mouth was as thin as the cutting edge of an axe and it turned down at the corners in the same way.
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His own hair imitated a toupee better than any toupee ever imitated hair.
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We travel not to discover new lands or new people, but new selves.
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They were always reading the law to her at home, which might not have been so bad if her father and mother had read from the same book.
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The born traveler shouldn't be a besotted reader. Traveling interrupts reading.
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I never meet anyone nowadays who admits to having had a happy childhood. Everyone appears to think happiness betokens a lack of sensitivity.
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A religious awakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love has roused him in vain.
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Winter could drop down out of a clear sky, sharp as an icicle, and, without a sound, pierce your heart.
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I am sad for people who do not like to be in the sun. It's a free intoxicant.
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When Opal stepped down from the wagon, she gave Hannah a hug and Hannah, who was solid, co-operated by making herself as compressible as possible. The fun in squeezing was, she knew, that something gave.
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Mama enjoyed bandying words. In fact, there was scarcely anything she enjoyed more. She made up words from scratch, by combining words, by turning them upside down, by running them backward. She built word palaces. Structures came out of her mouth like Steinberg pictures: wobbly, made of material fabricated on the spot, and no more useful than a poem.
Jessamyn West
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Quote of the day
Now if the harvest is over, And the world cold, Give me the bonus of laughter, As I lose hold.
John Betjeman
Jessamyn West
Born:
July 18, 1902
Died:
February 23, 1984
(aged 81)
Bio:
Mary Jessamyn West was an American author of short stories and novels, notably The Friendly Persuasion. A Quaker from Indiana, she graduated from Fullerton Union High School in 1919 and Whittier College in 1923.
Most used words:
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man
people
life
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heart
face
death
time
travel
alone
writer
making
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