Margaret Deland Quotes

92 Sourced Quotes

We've all of us got to meet the devil alone. Temptation is a lonely business.

Margaret Deland
His truthfulness, which ignored the courteous deceits of social life, was a kind of impropriety.

Margaret Deland
She empties her soul of its emotions just as a boy pulls his pocket wrong side out to show you that there's nothing in it.

Margaret Deland
Grief is the price Love pays for being in the same world with Death.

Margaret Deland
The blue and cloudless day closes like the lid of a casket of jewels upon the violet rim of sea, and shuts out the light.

Margaret Deland
When one promise jostles another, one of 'em isn't a promise.

Margaret Deland
There's one thing that always interests me about you good people, not your certainty that the rest of us are swine, — no doubt we are, — but your certainty that your opinions are pearls.

Margaret Deland
It is useless to deny that, unless one has a genius for imparting knowledge, teaching is a drudgery.

Margaret Deland
War is wicked, because it is murder and hate. And it is foolish, because hate and murder can only destroy people's bodies, not change their minds.

Margaret Deland
He's always had something for nothing That is the one immorality that damns.

Margaret Deland
We middle-aged folk have the education of life, truly; we know the multiplication table of anxieties and sorrows, the subtraction table of loss, the division table of responsibility.

Margaret Deland
Did you ever notice, Ellen, that the truth always hurts people's feelings?

Margaret Deland
There must be reserves — except with God. The human soul is solitary. But for confession that is different; justice and reparation sometimes demand it; but, again, justice and courage sometimes forbid it.

Margaret Deland
Twenty-five years ago, Christmas was not the burden that it is now; there was less haggling and weighing, less quid pro quo, less fatigue of body, less weariness of soul; and, most of all, there was less loading up with trash.

Margaret Deland
There's a pitch of virtue about him that is exhausting.

Margaret Deland
If you give way to fear, you'll be a coward; and... a coward is apt to be a liar. The devil's first name is Fear.

Margaret Deland
Some time in our lives every man and woman of us, putting out our hands toward the stars, touch on either side our prison walls the immutable limitations of temperament.

Margaret Deland
The insolence of time is like a blow in the face from an unseen enemy.

Margaret Deland
Mary, the Lord gives us our children; but Somebody Else gives us our in-laws!

Margaret Deland
When two duties jostle each other, one of 'em isn't a duty.

Margaret Deland
Silence is very moving to youth, for who knows what it hides?

Margaret Deland
In connection with death, or birth, or love, modesty is only a rather puerile self-consciousness.

Margaret Deland
I notice that when people have no sense of responsibility, you call them either criminals or geniuses.

Margaret Deland
Absurdity is the one thing love can't stand; it can overlook anything else, — coldness, or weakness, or viciousness, — but just be ridiculous and that's the end of it!

Margaret Deland
Love never forgets; or if it does, it is an imperfect love, like the beautiful love of a dog, faithful and unreasoning.

Margaret Deland
A letter is a risky thing; the writer gambles on the reader's frame of mind.

Margaret Deland
His past was no more to him than the eggshell is to the eagle.

Margaret Deland
Isn't there any statute of limitation in things spiritual? I don't believe any large mind dwells on its sins, any more than on its virtues!

Margaret Deland
I've always thought the law ought to put on spectacles, it has mighty poor eyesight once in a while.

Margaret Deland
When it comes to bombshells, there are few that can be more effective than that small, flat, frail thing, a letter.

Margaret Deland