Sarah Orne Jewett quotes:

Tact is after all a kind of mind reading.

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.

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 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.

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

This was one of those perfect New England days in late summer where the spirit of autumn takes a first stealing flight, like a spy, through the ripening country-side, and, with feigned sympathy for those who droop with August heat, puts her cool cloak of bracing air about leaf and flower and human shoulders.

What has made this nation great? Not its heroes but its households.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

A lean sorrow is hardest to bear.

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 ...

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

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.

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.

A harbor, even if it is a little harbor, is a good thing, since adventurers come into it as well as go out, and the life in it grows strong, because it takes something from the world, and has something to give in return.

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.

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.

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

if you don't keep and guard and mature your force, and above all, have time and quiet to perfect your work, you will be writing things not much better than you did five years ago. ... you must write to the human heart, the great consciousness that all humanity goes to make up. Otherwise what might be strength in a writer is only crudeness, and what might be insight is only observation; sentimemnt falls to sentimentality - you can write about life, but never write life itself.

Imagination is the only true thing in the world!

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

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.

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.

It does seem so pleasant to talk with an old acquaintance who knows what you know. I see so many new folks nowadays who seem to have neither past nor future. Conversation has got to have some root in the past, or else you have got to explain every remark you make, and it wears a person out.

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.

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

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.

I've got 's much feelin' as the next one, but when folks drives in their spiggits and wants to draw a bucketful o' compassion every day right straight along, there does come times when it seems as if the bar'l was getting low.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Such a nice day - out all day up in the Carter Notch direction, trout-fishing, with the long drive there and the long drive home again in time for supper. It was a lovely brook and I caught seven good trout and one small one - which eight trout-persons you should have for your breakfast if only you were near enough. It was not alone the fishing, but the delightful loneliness and being out of doors.

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

The growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

we have these instincts which defy all our wisdom and for which we never can frame any laws. ... They are powers which are imperfectly developed in this life, but one cannot help the thought that the mystery of this world may be the commonplace of the next.

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

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.

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?

Wrecked on the lee shore of age.

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.

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

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

Your patience may have long to wait,Whether in little things or great,But all good luck, you soon will learn,Must come to those who nobly earn.Who hunts the hay-field overWill find the four-leaved clover.