Happy Friday!
Have you seen the newly updated chalkboard hanging outside the Den? We absolutely love this quote by Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the celebrated Sherlock Holmes stories (we will be reading some of these this trimester!).
There’s more to this quote, however. We couldn’t fit it all on the chalkboard, but wanted to share the full excerpt with you because it’s excellent:
“It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own. You may not appreciate them at first. You may pine for your novel of crude and unadulterated adventure. You may, and will, give it the preference when you can. But the dull days come, and the rainy days come, and always you are driven to fill up the chinks of your reading with the worthy books which wait so patiently for your notice. And then suddenly, on a day which marks an epoch in your life, you understand the difference. You see, like a flash, how the one stands for nothing, and the other for literature. From that day onwards you may return to your crudities, but at least you do so with some standard of comparison in your mind. You can never be the same as you were before. Then gradually the good thing becomes more dear to you; it builds itself up with your growing mind; it becomes a part of your better self, and so, at last, you can look, as I do now, at the old covers and love them for all that they have meant in the past.”
~Arthur Conan Doyle
Wow, isn’t that fantastic? Can you relate? Let’s fill our kids’ hearts and shelves up with plenty of “worthy books” that will be dear to them for a lifetime.
We wish you an enjoyable weekend and hope you can spend a little time with your family, free from devices and electronics. Make some memories!
