Thursday, January 27, 2011

Literary quotes taken from a book

This is from Intimate Home, Creating a Private World:

"Life (is) a round of simple pleasures and domestic delights." - Dame Edith Sitwell

"Transported through books to faraway places, one can take frequent journeys of the spirit."

"Dream over books ... and let the line of thought dip deeper into the stream." - Virginia Woolf

"What I mean by reading is... reading again and again, in all sorts of moods, with an increase of delight every time, till the thing read has become a part of your system and goes forth along with you to meet any new experience you may have." - C.E. Montague

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book?" - Henry David Thoreau

"... this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures. When life sank down for a moment, the range of experience seemed limitless... There were all the places she had not seen; the Indian plains; she felt herself pushing aside the thick leather curtain of a church in Rome..." - Virginia Woolf

"To sit in idleness over a good fire in a well-proportioned room is a luxurious sensation." - Jane Austen

Home is "a little kingdom I possess, where thoughts and feelings dwell." - Louisa May Alcott

"What cannot letters inspire? They have souls; they can speak; they have in them all that force which expresses the transports of the heart; they have all the fire of our passions. They can raise them as much as if the persons themselves were present... Having lost the substantial pleasures of seeing and possessing you, I shall in some measure compensate this loss by the satisfaction I shall find in your writing. There I shall read your most sacred thoughts." - From a letter of Heloise to Abelard

Calligraphy's measured beauty speaks of an age where time moved more slowly, and of a world where there was ample time for the graceful curve. The flowing lines turn thoughts into endearing keepsakes to be admired.

"A light bookcase contained duodecimo volumes of polite literature in calf, completing the furniture." - George Eliot

Perfume, the heart note of a woman's soul, (is) decanted in heavy cut-glass flacons.

"... mother's room... was as the abode of a fairy... - a mystic chamber of splendour and delights..." - William Makepeace Thackeray

A home can embody many places. It can be at once a retreat for solitude and personal pursuits, and a setting for favourite things, dreams and beauty.