Monday, April 26, 2010

Quotation of the Week: On Literature


Sarah Orne Jewett has long been one of my favorite 19th century American writers. One of the "local color" women writers of the late 1800s which includes Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (New England) and Willa Cather (Midwest), Jewett wrote about her beloved Maine: the place, the people, the mindset. Her most well-known novel, The Country of the Pointed Firs, has been a favorite book of mine since my introduction to her in graduate school.

My Quotation for the Week was written by Sarah Orne Jewett, and it's a lovely little thing about the value of the writer and of capital "L" Literature (you know, the "real" stuff):

"The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper--whether little or great, it belongs to Literature."

--Sarah Orne Jewett
I find this little gem valuable as my plans for a book on the value of liturgy and ancient church practice for a modern evangelical audience keeps teasing my brain. I have no time to pursue it now, but I allow it to circle, strengthening with each revolution through my mind. I hope that something comes of it--something worthy--or at least worthwhile.

Only time shall tell, as the old cliche goes.

1 comment:

sarah said...

that is a good quote indeed. and I think she has a lovely face, don't you? she looks like someone I'd enjoy meeting.

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