Martha Ostenso quotes:

But one had to go back to the beginning of things, always. Trace the thread of life - find the knot - untangle it.

There is too much doing - too little being! When we begin to get strenuous, life begins to grow intolerable.

a man can break God's laws and be forgiven. That's what they teach us. But when he breaks Nature's laws, there's no forgiveness - and there's no escape. Sooner or later he pays the penalty, or his children pay it - or his children's children. It doesn't matter much. It must be paid.

A sickness ... defines margins, crystallizes the shape of things.

Ah, life, life, how madly, how cruelly it raced along your pulses!

By mid-morning a rain as fine as silk spills was weaving over the lake.

Growing old was simply a process of drawing closer to that ultimate independence called death.

Here and there on the branch of an oak a congress of leaves still clung, rigid as flakes of bronze.

once a man had thrust his hands into the soil and knew the grit of it between his teeth, he felt something rise within him that was not of his day or generation, but had persisted through birth and death from a time beyond recall.

There's precious little comes of telling people what they don't want to hear ...

Religion is passionate, reckless, destructive, idol-smashing. It's a martyr burning at the stake. It's a crown of thorns and a cross.

God, what pathetic creatures had inherited the earth, to walk a little while with their eyes upon the stars and turn their gaze too soon upon the ground that held their feet!

I don't see as it matters much how well you mean if it's harm you're doin' ...

it was a sly trick of God's to give a man work to do - it kept him from asking questions that God couldn't answer.

It's remarkable - most remarkable, the way these people manage, from time to time, a tragedy or a near-tragedy to break the even tenor of their ways,' said Mr. Tingley, in a tone of half-humorous superiority, by which he considered that he distinguished himself, subtly and inoffensively, from 'these people.

Listen - man is a child of Nature. When he turns against his mother - he's done! He may not find out about it right away, but he will.

The lush green of the fields became a rich gold that swayed sturdily under the wind and fell at last before the hands of the reapers.

The past ... is a dim avenue down which we may walk and find the diverging paths of terror and beauty and passion ...

The snow again. White, white net of beauty, net of dream, trapping the earth, trapping the helpless heart of life ...

There was nothing so real on the prairie as winter, nothing so memorable.

Time passed so much more slowly than space.

Time, designing slowly, swiftly; Time, destroying slowly, swiftly; Time holding, possessing the earth in its tender indifference.

You have stirred the soil with your plow, my friend. It will never be the same again.

A false vision was better than none.