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Quote by Johanne Spyri

“So musste es jeden Morgen zuerst lange hin und her schauen, bis es sich wieder besinnen konnte, wo es war, und jedes Mal fühlte es etwas auf seinem Herzen liegen, das es würgte und drückte, wenn es sah, dass es nicht daheim sei auf der Alp. (S. 248)”

Quote by Johanne Spyri

Book:Heidi

Work

Heidi

Heidi is a beloved children's book that follows the story of a young girl who is sent to live with her grandfather in the Swiss Alps. The narrative explores Heidi's relationship with nature, her interactions with the local people, and her own personal growth. The book is celebrated for its portrayal of the beauty of the Swiss countryside and its message of simplicity and joy. more

Author

Johanne Spyri

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“Eighteen years have gone by, and still I can bring back every detail of that day in the meadow. Washed clean of summer's dust by days of gentle rain, the mountains wore a deep, brilliant green. The October breeze set white fronds of head-tall grass swaying. One long streak of cloud hung pasted across a dome of frozen blue. It almost hurt to look at that far-off sky. A puff of wind swept across the meadow and through her hair before it slipped into the woods to rustle branches and send back snatches of distant barking- a hazy sound that seemed to reach us from the doorway of another world. We heard no other sounds. We met no other people. We saw only two bright, red birds leap startled from the center of the meadow and dart into the woods. As we ambled along, Naoko spoke to me of wells.”

“Nostalgia is possibly the greatest of the lies that we all tell ourselves. It is the glossing of the past to fit the sensibilities of the present. For some, it brings a measure of comfort, a sense of self and of source, but others I fear take these altered memories too far, and because of that paralyze themselves to the realities about them. How many people wonder for that past, simpler and better world, I wonder? Without ever recognizing that truth that perhaps it was they who were simpler and better, and not the world about them.”

“It was like going back to a childhood home after decades away. You knew it intimately and saw past the changes time had wrought, the nostalgia seeping into you as forgotten memories sprang up, but it wasn’t quite right. It didn’t belong to you anymore, and you were left torn by the desire that things be as they once were, and the realization that the present was as it should be.”

“Ni mi madre, que durmió junto a él veinte años, supo del espanto que atenazó su vida y su imaginación desde entonces y para siempre. Todos creímos que se le había olvidado. Pero ahí estaba el abismo del que nunca hablaba, ahí, en la nostalgia con que se reclinó en la puerta de nuestra casa, a ver cómo sus tres hijos mayores nos íbamos a vivir a la ciudad de México.”

“Summertime! And summertime in my early twenties! And in love! No, better than that - secretly in love, coddling it up in myself. It's an odd feeling, coming rarely more than once in most of our lifetimes. In books, as often as not, they represent it as a sort of anguish but it wasn't so for me. Later perhaps, but not then.”

“To feel one’s attachment to a certain region, one’s love for a certain group of men, to know that there is always a spot where one’s heart will feel at peace – these are many certainties for a single human life. And yet this is not enough. But at certain moments everything yearns for that spiritual home. ‘Yes, we must go back there – there, indeed.”