Sarah Orne Jewett Quotes

Tact is after all a kind of mind reading.

Look bravely up into the sky, And be content with knowing That God wished for a buttercup Just here, where you are growing.

My childhood is very vivid to me, and I don't feel very different now from the way I felt then. It would appear I am the very same person, only with wrinkles.

A story should be managed so that it should suggest interesting things to the reader instead of the author's doing all the thinking for him, and setting it before him in black and white.

The growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.

I've found that people who look at things as they are, and not as they wish them to be, are the ones who succeed.

The warm sun kissed the earthTo consecrate thy birth,And from his close embraceThy radiant faceSprang into sight,A blossoming delight.

When she walked...she stretched out long and thin like a little tiger, and held her head high to look over the grass as if she were treading the jungle.

It seems to me like stealing, for men and women to live in the world and do nothing to make it better.

In the life of each of us there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness.

You must find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world.

Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of.

The old poets little knew what comfort they could be to a man.

It is only unimaginative persons who can be really astonished. The imagination can always outrun the possible and actual sights and sounds of the world.

When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.

Write it as it is, don't try to make it like this or that. You can't do it in anybody else's way-you will have to make a way of your own.

It is the people who can do nothing who find nothing to do, and the secret to happiness in this world is not only to be useful, but to be forever elevating one's uses.

My dear father; my dear friend; the best and wisest man I ever knew, who taught me many lessons and showed me many things as we went together along the country by-ways.

God would not give us the same talent if what were right for men were wrong for women.

The process of falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.

You never get over bein' a child long's you have a mother to go to.

The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper - whether little or great, it belongs to Literature.

Imagination is the only true thing in the world!

What's everybody's business is nobody's business.

Who was it said that you never get to a place until a day after you come, nor leave it until a day after you go?

It is not often given in a noisy world to come to the places of great grief and silence.

Satisfaction, even after one has dined well, is not so interesting and eager a feeling as hunger.

It is a splendid thing to have the use of any gift of God. It isn't for us to choose again, or wonder and dispute, but just work in our own places, and leave the rest to God.

Conversation's got to have some root in the past, or else you've got to explain every remark you make, an' it wears a person out.

There is something out of gear about graded schools and all that. Memory is developed at the expense of what in general we are pleased to call thought and character.

the mysterious moment of death proves to be a moment of waking. How one longs to take it for one's self!

Life was resumed, and anxious living blew away as if it had not been. I could not breathe deep enough or long enough. It was a return to happiness.

my friends plunged into a borderless sea of reminiscences and personal news.

Wrecked on the lee shore of age.

There's some herb that's good for everybody, except for them that thinks they're sick when they ain't.

Some set more by such things as come from a distance, but I rec'lect mother always used to maintain that folks was meant to be doctored with the stuff that grew right about 'em.

Don't scatter your fire! You are a prose writer: stick to your own tool!

Tain't worthwhile to wear a day all out before it comes.

In these days the young folks is all copy-cats, 'fraid to death they won't be all just alike; as for the old folks, they pray for the advantage o' bein' a little different.

So we die before our own eyes; so we see some chapters of our lives come to their natural end.

There was a patient look on the old man's face, as if the world were a great mistake and he had nobody with whom to speak his own language or find companionship.

A lean sorrow is hardest to bear.

Do not hurry too fast in these early winter days, - a quiet hour is worth more to you than anything you can do in it.

Love isn't blind; it's only love that sees!

T'ain't worthwhile to wear a day all out before it comes.

A harbor even if it is a little harbor is a good thing.... It takes something from the world and has something to give in return.

The road was new to me as roads always are going back.

Yes'm old friends is always best 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of.

Find your quiet center of life and write from that to the world.

I couldn't help thinkin' if she was as far out o' town as she was out o' tune, she wouldn't get back in a day.