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MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO

Have you read this book? It's by Ann Radcliffe. I read it during my college orientation (I took it on the plane and every moment I was alone picked it up again.) I was interested by Ann Radcliffe because Jane Austen parodied her, and there's plenty to parody in Udolpho, but there's also some good lines. 

I keep thinking of this quote as quarantine has forced me to tap the brakes on so much of what I was chasing and think more deeply and introspectively (although sadly, not at a country estate on the edges of the Garonne.) Still, "More in PITY than in anger" sums up how I felt taking the Twitter app off my phone.

M. St. Aubert loved to wander, with his wife and daughter, on the margin of the Garonne... He had known life in other forms than those of pastoral simplicity, having mingled in the gay and in the busy scenes of the world; but the flattering portrait of mankind, which his heart had delineated in early youth, his experience had too sorrowfully corrected. Yet, amidst the changing visions of life, his principles remained unshaken, his benevolence unchilled; and he retired from the multitude 'more in PITY than in anger,' to scenes of simple nature, to the pure delights of literature, and to the exercise of domestic virtues.