A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary.
Everyone bowed to that unwritten law of family life which ordains that, in the long run, everyone submerges his personal preference in the effort to conform to that of the member of the circle who complains most loudly and is most difficult to satisfy.
Compared with more emotional types, Vermonters seem to have few passions. But those they have are great and burning. The greatest is their conviction that without freedom human life is not worth living.
On New Year’s Day every calendar, large and small, has the same number of dates. But we soon learn that the years are of very different lengths.
Vermont is the only place in America where I ever hear thrift spoken of with respect.
What is life, but one long risk?
Father sticks to it that anything that promises to pay too much can’t help being risky.
Never since the dawn of human history, as far as I can find out, did people long settled in any region give a friendly welcome to newcomers. One of the disagreeable traits of our human nature seems to be to dislike on sight people who come later than the first settlers.
I’m as fixed in my opinion as the man who thought he was a hard-boiled egg.
Almost anything is enough to keep alive someone who wishes nothing for himself but time to write music...
There’s no healthy life possible without some sensual feeling between the husband and wife, but there’s nothing in the world more awful than married life when it’s the only common ground.
You can’t wish a body any worse luck than to get what he wants.
Life takes hold of us with strong hands and makes us greater than we thought.
What a fearfully distracting, perplexing and heart-searching business it is to live.
I declare! Sometimes it seems to me that every time a new piece of machinery comes into the door some of our wits fly out the window!
I never did,′ said the little girl, but in a less doubtful tone than she had ever used with that phrase so familiar to her. A dim notion was growing in her mind that the fact that she had never done a thing was no proof that she couldn’t.
The minute your group gets so big you don’t know anybody in it and they don’t know you, there’s hell to pay.
Eva had passionate love and devotion to give them, but neither patience nor understanding. There was no sacrifice in the world which she would not joyfully make for her children except to live with them.
It wasn’t because Eva had not tried her best. She had nearly killed herself trying. But she had been like a gifted mathematician set to paint a picture.
Not a thing had happened the way she had planned, no, not a single thing! But it seemed to her she had never been so happy in her life.
The matter was that never before had she known what she was doing in school. She had always thought she was there to pass from one grade to another, and she was ever so startled to get a glimpse of the fact that she was there to learn how to read and write and cipher and generally use her mind, so she could take care of herself when she came to be grown up.