Sarah Orne Jewett Quotes

52 Sourced Quotes

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

Sarah Orne Jewett
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
A man's house is really but his larger body, and expresses in a way his nature and character.

Sarah Orne Jewett
Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading.

Sarah Orne Jewett
It seemed as if all the clocks in Deephaven, and all the people with them, had stopped years ago, and the people had been doing over and over what they had been busy about during the last week of their unambitious progress.

Sarah Orne Jewett
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.

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

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
"Dear robin," said this sad young flower,
"Perhaps you'd not mind trying
To find a nice white frill for me,
Some day when you are flying?" "You silly thing!" the robin said;
"I think you must be crazy!
I'd rather be my honest self
Than any made-up daisy. "You're nicer in your own bright gown,
The little children love you;
Be the best buttercup you can,
And think no flower above you. "Though swallows leave me out of sight,
We'd better keep our places;
Perhaps the world would all go wrong
With one too many daisies. "Look bravely up into the sky,
And be content with knowing
That God wished for a buttercup
Just here, where you are growing."

Sarah Orne Jewett
She's well featured, if it were not for her nose, and that looks as if it had been thrown at her, and she wasn't particular about having it on firm, in hopes of getting a better one.

Sarah Orne Jewett
What's everybody's business is nobody's business...

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
"Step in some afternoon," he said, as affectionately as if I were a fellow-shipmaster wrecked on the lee shore of age like himself.

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

Sarah Orne Jewett
'Tis a good deal more tryin' to be tied to folks you don't like than 'tis to be alone.

Sarah Orne Jewett
She wore a fixed smile that wa'n't a smile; there wa'n't no light behind it, same's a lamp can't shine if it ain't lit.

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
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.

Sarah Orne Jewett
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.

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
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
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
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
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
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.

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

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