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  • The American Scholar

    Commonplace Book

    Dec 03, 2018 4 minutes
    Collected by Anne Matthews

    Skating, Ruth flew and, flying, she was free.

    —John Updike, Marry Me, 1976

    To dine, drink champagne, make a racket, and deliver speeches about national consciousness, the conscience of the people, freedom, and such things, while slaves in tailcoats are running round your tables, veritable serfs, and your coachmen wait outside in the street, in the bitter cold—that is lying to the Holy Ghost.

    —Anton Chekhov, notebook entry, February 19, 1897 (tr. by S. S. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf )

    Francis, perhaps, who lay in sister snow

    Before the wealthy gate Freezing and praising, might have

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