As Tocqueville had seen a little while before, homemaking, which ought to make people more selfish, often makes them less so: it gives them stake in other people's homes. It is not so much the establishment of a garden but the ownership of a gate that moves people from liking a society based on favors to liking one based on rights. Enclosing our gardens broadens our circle of compassion.-Adam Gopnik
Sam and I are still reading Angels and Ages and we both found this paragraph a beautiful way to tie Lincoln and Darwin's fierce love of their families into the review and comparisons of their lives. We are spending more time on this book than we thought we would, re-reading and researching, intrigued by two men's lives we knew very little about.
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