Art & Creativity Quote by Julia Ward Howe

There is a quiet militancy in “I take refuge in my books,” especially coming from Julia Ward Howe, an activist whose public life was anything but quiet. “Refuge” isn’t just a cozy image; it’s a defensive one. It implies siege conditions: the world as noisy, demanding, and often hostile to women who spoke too loudly, wanted too much, or refused to stay decorative. Howe’s era treated female intellect as a kind of trespass, and activism as a breach of manners. So the line reads like a survival tactic: if the public sphere punishes you for your convictions, you build a private fortress out of language.

The phrasing matters. Not “I read books,” but “I take refuge” in them. It’s a deliberate withdrawal that still keeps her in contact with power. Books are portable authority; they let you rehearse arguments, steal courage from other minds, and return to the fight better armed. For an activist, that’s not escape so much as resupply.

The subtext is also a bit barbed: society offers her limited shelter, so she makes her own. In the 19th century, women were often told their proper refuge was the home; Howe subtly relocates that sanctified safety to the library. It’s a small sentence that smuggles in a big claim: interior life is not a retreat from history, it’s where history gets drafted.