I now remembered that Mrs. Todd had told me one day that Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading. - Sarah Orne Jewett

Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading.

It is not one’s surroundings that can help or hinder – it is having a growing purpose in one’s life to make the most of whatever is in one’s reach. If you have but a few good books, learn those to the very heart of them. Don’t for one moment believe that if you had different surroundings and opportunities you would find the upward path any easier to climb. One condition is like another, if you have not the determination and the power to grow in yourself.

A community narrows down and grows dreadful ignorant when it is shut up to its own affairs, and gets no knowledge of the outside world except from a cheap, unprincipled paper.

It does seem so pleasant to talk with an old acquaintance who knows what you know. I see so many new folks nowadays who seem to have neither past nor future. Conversation has got to have some root in the past, or else you have got to explain every remark you make, and it wears a person out.