Sarah Orne Jewett

There are plenty of people dragging themselves miserably through the world, because they are clogged and fettered with work for which they have no fitness... I can't help believing that nothing is better than to find one's work early and hold fast to it, and put all one's heart into it.

I now remembered that Mrs. Todd had told me one day that Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading.

The bright flower was like a face. Somehow, the beauty and life of it were surprising in the plain room, like a gay little child who might suddenly appear in a doorway.

There's more women likes to be loved than there is of those that loves.

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

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.

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.

The growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.

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

It does seem so pleasant to talk with an old acquaintance that knows what you know. I see so many of these new folks nowadays, that seem to have neither past nor future. 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.

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.

It was mortifying to find how strong the habit of idle speech may become in one__ self. One need not always be saying something in this noisy world.

In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong.

A community narrows down and grows dreadful ignorant when it is shut up to its own affairs, and gets no knowledge of the outside world except from a cheap, unprincipled paper.

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.