Reminiscences of a Student's Life Quotes

“Life does not cease when you are old,
it only suffers a rich change. You go on
loving, only your love, instead of a burning,
fiery furnace, is the mellow glow of an
autumn sun.”
― Jane Ellen Harrison, Reminiscences of a Student's Life

“Nowadays it seems you learn only what is reasonable
and relevant. I went to Rome with a young
friend, educated on the latest lines, and who
had taken historical honours at Cambridge.
The first morning the pats of butter came
up stamped with the Twins. “ Good old
Romulus and Remus,” said I. “ Good old
who? ” said she. She had never heard of
the Twins and was much bored when I told
her the story; they had no place in “ con¬
stitutional history ”, and for her the old wolf
of the Capitol howled in vain: “ Great God!
I’d rather be ”!”
― Jane Ellen Harrison, Reminiscences of a Student's Life

“I like to live spaciously, but rather plainly, in large halls with great spaces and quiet libraries. I like to wake in the morning with the sense of a
great, silent garden round me.”
― Jane Ellen Harrison, Reminiscences of a Student's Life

“At his house I often met Henry James. I liked
to watch that ingenious spider weaving his
webs, but to me he had no appeal.”
― Jane Ellen Harrison, Reminiscences of a Student's Life

“I mention these ritual dances, this ritual
drama, this bridge between art and life,
because it is things like these that I was all
my life blindly seeking. A thing has little
charm for me unless it has on it the patina
of age. Great things in literature, Greek
plays for example, I most enjoy when behind
their bright splendours I see moving darker
and older shapes.”
― Jane Ellen Harrison, Reminiscences of a Student's Life

“Then Ruskin came.
I showed him our small library. He looked
at it with disapproving eyes. “ Each book ”,
he said gravely, “ that a young girl touches
should be bound in white vellum.” I thought
with horror of the red moroccos and Spanish
leather that had been my choice. A few
weeks later the old humbug sent us his own
works bound in dark blue calf!”
― Jane Ellen Harrison, Reminiscences of a Student's Life

“And then last, but oh, so utterly
first, came George Eliot. It was in the days
when her cult was at its height—thank heaven
I never left her shrine!—and we used to wait
outside Macmillan’s shop to seize the new
instalments of Daniel Deronda. She came
for a few minutes to my room, and I was
almost senseless with excitement. I had just
repapered my room with the newest thing in
dolorous Morris papers. Some one must have
called her attention to it, for I remember that
she said in her shy, impressive way, “Your
paper makes a beautiful background for your
face.” The ecstasy was too much, and I
knew no more.”
― Jane Ellen Harrison, Reminiscences of a Student's Life

“It was worth many hardships to
see forty German professors try to mount
forty recalcitrant mules. My own horseman¬
ship, as already hinted, is nothing to “ write
home about ”, but compared to those German
professors I am a centaur.”
― Jane Ellen Harrison, Reminiscences of a Student's Life

“When I first came to London I became a Life Member of the London Library. London life was
costly, but I felt that, if the worst came to the
worst, with a constant supply of books and a
small dole for tobacco, I could cheerfully
face the Workhouse.”
― Jane Ellen Harrison, Reminiscences of a Student's Life

“As to Death, when I was young, personal immortality seemed to me axiomatic. The mere thought of Death made me furious. I was so intensely alive I felt I could defy any one, anything—God, or demon, or Fate herself—to put me out. All that is changed now. If I think of Death at all it is merely as a negation of life, a close, a last and necessary chord. What I dread is disease, that is, bad, disordered life, not Death, and disease, so far, I have escaped. I have no hope whatever of personal immortality, no desire even for a future life. My consciousness began in a very humble fashion, with my body; with my body, very quietly, I hope it will end.”
― Jane Ellen Harrison, Reminiscences of a Student's Life

“There was an odd rule throughout the College that no girl might buy a book.”
― Jane Ellen Harrison, Reminiscences of a Student's Life

“Though I have lived most of my life with
educationalists, I have little interest in educa¬
tion. I dislike schools, both for boys and
girls. A child between the ages of eight and
eighteen, the normal school years, is too young
to form a collective opinion, children only
set up foolish savage taboos. I dislike also
all plans for “developing a child’s mind ”,
and all conscious forms of personal influence
of the younger by the elder. Let children
early speak at least three foreign languages,
let them browse freely in a good library, see
all they can of the first-rate in nature, art,
and literature—above all, give them a chance
of knowing what science and scientific method
means, and then leave them to sink or swim.
Above all things, do not cultivate in them a
taste for literature.”
― Jane Ellen Harrison, Reminiscences of a Student's Life

“If I could
have my life over again, I would devote it not
to art or literature, but to language. Life
itself may hit one hard, but always, always one
can take sanctuary in language. Language is
as much an art and as sure a refuge as paint¬
ing or music or literature. It reflects and
interprets and makes bearable life; only
it is a wider, because more subconscious,
life.”
― Jane Ellen Harrison, Reminiscences of a Student's Life