Source identified1
Image design Linen
Read & copy
“All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find,”
Meaning & context
Agnes opens her story by claiming that lived experience can teach, while immediately admitting that some narratives yield only modest lessons.
Source details
Agnes Grey, Chapter I, “The Parsonage,” Project Gutenberg #767. The frozen catalog is the opening clause of the narrator’s longer first sentence, which continues that the instructional “treasure” may be hard to find. Agnes Grey is a fictional first-person narrator; the passage should not be presented as literal Anne Brontë autobiography.