Gifts

For Readers

For the one who underlines.

A few of these lines are about books. Most are from them.

Jane Eyre. Walden. War and Peace. Frankenstein.

Every line is traced to the page it came from. So the reader you’re buying for can check.

I cannot live without books.

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to John Adams, June 10, 1815

For readers.

…but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit…

John Milton

Areopagitica (1644)

For readers, and against banning books.

I would always rather be happy than dignified.

Charlotte Brontë

Jane Eyre (1847), chapter 34

Jane

When pride is in the way of being happy.

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.

Charlotte Brontë

Jane Eyre (1847), chapter 6

Helen Burns

When you're done holding a grudge.

And there is no greatness where simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent.

Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace (1869), Book XIV, ch. XVIII

When 'great' people are behaving badly.

The world was to me a secret, which I desired to discover.

Mary Shelley

Frankenstein (1818 first edition), Vol. I, Chapter I

Victor Frankenstein

For the endlessly curious.

Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.

Mary Shelley

Frankenstein (1818 first edition)

The Creature

When fear is the only thing holding you back.

The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.

John Milton

Paradise Lost, Book I, lines 254–255

Satan

When your circumstances aren't the whole story.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

Oscar Wilde

The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Algernon

When someone sells you a too-neat version of events.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it…

Henry David Thoreau

Walden — “Economy” (1854)

Before a big purchase, job or yes.

Not till we are lost…do we begin to find ourselves…

Henry David Thoreau

Walden — “The Village” (1854)

Lost after a change, a move, an ending.

Things do not change; we change.

Henry David Thoreau

Walden, Chapter XVIII — “Conclusion” (1854)

When the world stayed put and you didn't.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.

Mark Twain

The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, Chapter XV — “The Robber Robbed” (1894)

Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar

Living with or working next to someone.

When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.

Mark Twain

The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, Chapter X — “The Nymph Revealed” (1894)

Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar

When the meeting runs long and you're already at three.

Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others.

Okakura Kakuzō

The Book of Tea, Chapter I — “The Cup of Humanity” (1906)

When you need a little humility, or to notice others.

…for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations, V.16

When you notice what you're feeding your mind.

One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), Prologue §5

When your life is a mess and you're making something anyway.

ALONE, adj. In bad company.

Ambrose Bierce

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

For the happy introvert who can laugh at it.