Nan Fairbrother Quotes

19 Sourced Quotes

There are so many disciplines in being a parent besides the obvious ones like getting up in the night and putting up with the noise in the day. And almost the hardest of all is learning to be a well of affection and not a fountain, to show them we love them, not when we feel like it, but when they do.

Nan Fairbrother
A garden is one of the very few expressions of man's nature that is altogether benign.

Nan Fairbrother
Summer weather, like being in love,is a philosopher's stone which turns our ordinary days to gold. But not the whole day... For it is never the whole day, never all our life which is transformed in any happiness, but only the exquisite moments.

Nan Fairbrother
It is always one of the tragedies of any relationship, even between people sensitive to each other's moods, that the moments of emotion so rarely coincide.

Nan Fairbrother
Children once settled and confident can mostly be left, it seems, to manage their difficulties without us. Only what we must do, always and unalterably, is hold their hand firmly in general goodwill, then they themselves seem to deal with their own particular troubles far better than we can.

Nan Fairbrother
The large black slugs... come out at dusk. Enormous slugs. As big as crocodiles. So huge we need a gun to shoot them. And by the end of the summer, if they go on growing, we shall have to go out in pairs together for protection.

Nan Fairbrother
One of the many possible divisions of human beings is into those who make and those who use.

Nan Fairbrother
I have reached the stage now where luxury is not in fine possessions but in carefree possessions, and the greatest luxury of all would be the completely expendable.

Nan Fairbrother
Understanding, above all, is a gift we should never offer uninvited.

Nan Fairbrother
Most of us are experts at solving other people's problems, but we generally solve them in terms of our own and the advice we give is seldom for other people but for ourselves.

Nan Fairbrother
There is a stage with people we love when we are no longer separate from them, but so close in sympathy that we live through them as directly as through ourselves.... we push back our hair because theirs is in their eyes.

Nan Fairbrother
Happiness makes us older, less romantic, less in need of dreams. Discontent, not happiness, is the food of youth and poetry.

Nan Fairbrother
Children are not undeveloped versions of adult people: they are a different race of beings: they are children.

Nan Fairbrother
Every search has its own momentum. It is why a search makes such an excellent plot for a film or story.

Nan Fairbrother
We envy people we love for being always in their own loved company.

Nan Fairbrother
Leisure is an attitude of mind, not simply remission of work.

Nan Fairbrother
The sorrows we imagine are more profound and inconsolable than real life leaves us time for.

Nan Fairbrother
Enthusiasm is a plant which grows variously in the varying soils of different natures.

Nan Fairbrother
Perhaps the way with any obsession is to ignore it simply. Not to fight it, since it draws strength from any contact with us, whether hostile or friendly.

Nan Fairbrother