The Measure of My Days is completely different from the books I usually read but I loved it. The writing is so eloquent and Florida Scott-Maxwell does such a great job in expressing emotion and passion.
Highlights:
I assume that I made my world out of what life offered, but my innate quality must have drawn it towards me. I fused it all together only half knowing what I did.
I feel most real when alone, even most alive when alone. When I am with other people, I try to find them or try to find a point in myself from which to make a bridge to them.
I love my family for so many reasons; for what I see them to be, for the loveliness they have been, for the good I know in them.
The most uncomfortable thing in the world is to stand alone.
It is not easy to be sure that being yourself is worth the trouble, but we know it is our sacred duty.
But human beings are not easily shattered. They continue to love, marry and wreck each other, in fact, they dare to live. If they were not mostly blind to the effects of their behavior how could the world go on?
If I regret none of the bad things that have happened to me, knowing that I needed them all to reach any ripeness, then is all hardship justified if someone learns by it?
We are also blind to the miracles of good that come to us. We hardy heed them, we even protest against them.
I do not know what I seek, cannot know, but I am where the mystery is the certainty.
If at the end of your life you have only yourself, it is much. Look, you will find.
We are bound to those we love, or to those who love us, and to those who need us to be brave, or content, or even happy enough to allow them not to worry about us.
I assume that I made my world out of what life offered, but my innate quality must have drawn it towards me. I fused it all together only half knowing what I did.
Life has to be hard to have any effect on us; even now we hardly notice it.
*As always, I take no credit.
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