Sarah Orne Jewett Quotes

52 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Sarah Orne Jewett
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.

Sarah Orne Jewett
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.

Sarah Orne Jewett
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 over
Will find the four-leaved clover.

Sarah Orne Jewett
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.

Sarah Orne Jewett
She had no equal in sickness, and knew how to brew every old-fashioned dose and to make every variety of herb-tea, and when her nursing was put to an end by her patient's death, she was commander-in-chief at the funeral.

Sarah Orne Jewett
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.

Sarah Orne Jewett
To let God make us, instead of painfully trying to make ourselves; to follow the path that his love shows us, instead of through conceit or cowardice or mockery choosing another; to trust Him for our strength and fitness as the flowers do, simply giving ourselves back to Him in grateful service,—this is to keep the laws that give us the freedom of the city in which there is no longer any night of bewilderment or ignorance or uncertainty.

Sarah Orne Jewett
My friends plunged into a borderless sea of reminiscences and personal news.

Sarah Orne Jewett
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?

Sarah Orne Jewett
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.

Sarah Orne Jewett
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.

Sarah Orne Jewett
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.

Sarah Orne Jewett
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.

Sarah Orne Jewett
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.

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

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

Sarah Orne Jewett
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.

Sarah Orne Jewett
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.

Sarah Orne Jewett
She did not seem to mind talking about the troubles of her married life any more than a soldier minds telling the story of his campaigns, and dwells with pride on the worst battle of all.

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

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

Sarah Orne Jewett
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.

Sarah Orne Jewett
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.

Sarah Orne Jewett