Daddy-Long-Legs
A orphaned girl writes letters to a man she's never met. Jerusha Abbott is the oldest resident at the John Grier Home, a grim orphanage where imagination is considered a liability, when an eccentric trustee offers her something impossible: a college education. There's only one condition. She'll never know who he is. She sees only his shadow, long and strange, so she calls him Daddy-Long-Legs. What follows are the letters she writes to this invisible benefactor, and they are nothing like gratitude notes. They're witty, irascible, full of opinions about Latin grammar and campus architecture and the ridiculousness of young women being taught to cook when they should be learning to think. Jerusha refuses to be precious about her circumstances. She's poor and clever and unapologetically ambitious, and somewhere between her first horrified encounter with a dinner fork and her growing friendship with a fellow student named Jervis, she discovers that education isn't just about learning things - it's about becoming someone who belongs to herself. The novel crackles with humor and quiet subversion, a story about a girl who uses her mind as a weapon and her heart as a compass.
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X-Ray
“It isn't the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh - I really think that requires spirit.It's the kind of character that I am going to develop. I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skillfully and fairly as I can. If I lose, I am going to shrug my shoulders and laugh - also if I win.””
— Jean Webster
“I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other people's places. It makes them kind and sympathetic and understanding.””
— Jean Webster
“The world is full of happiness, and plenty to go round, if you are only willing to take the kind that comes your way. The whole secret is in being .””
— Jean Webster
“It isn't the great big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones--I've discovered the true secret of happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now. Not to be for ever regretting the past, or anticipating the future; but to get the most that you can out of this very instant.””
— Jean Webster
“I believe absolutely in my own free will and my own power to accomplish - and that is the belief that moves mountains. ””
— Jean Webster
“Is it snowing where you are? All the world that I see from my tower is draped in white and the flakes are coming down as big as pop-corns. It's late afternoon - the sun is just setting (a cold yellow colour) behind some colder violet hills, and I am up in my window seat using the last light to write to you.””
— Jean Webster
“He and I always think the same things are funny, and that is such a lot; it's dreadful when two people's senses of humor are antagonistic. I don't believe there's any bridging that gulf!And he is--Oh, well! He is just himself, and I miss him, and miss him, and miss him. The whole world seems empty and aching. I hate the moonlight because it's beautiful and he isn't here to seeit with me. But maybe you've loved somebody, too, and you know? If you have, I don't need to explain; if you haven't, I can't explain.””
— Jean Webster
“Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,You never answered my question and it was very important.ARE YOU BALD?””
— Jean Webster
“It's much more entertaining to live books than to write them.””
— Jean Webster
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Webster, Jean. Daddy-Long-Legs. Lex, lex-books.com/book/daddy-long-legs-47163fc5-9d02-4445-8018-ddd3be873376.Webster, J. (n.d.). Daddy-Long-Legs. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/daddy-long-legs-47163fc5-9d02-4445-8018-ddd3be873376Webster, Jean. Daddy-Long-Legs. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/daddy-long-legs-47163fc5-9d02-4445-8018-ddd3be873376.
