Before she was fourteen, when she started to experience a period of calm, Therese started to read "The Imitation of Christ". She read the "Imitation" intently, as if the author traced each sentence for her: "The Kingdom of God is within you… Turn thee with thy whole heart unto the Lord; and forsake this wretched world: and thy soul shall find rest." She kept the book with her constantly and wrote later that this book and parts of another book of a very different character, lectures by Abbé Arminjon on "The End of This World, and the Mysteries of the World to Come", nourished her during this critical period. Thereafter she began to read other books, mostly on history and science.