Home > Author > Sarah Orne Jewett
1 " 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
2 " There's more women likes to be loved than there is of those that loves. "
3 " The bright flower was like a face. Somehow, the beauty and life of it were surprising in the plain room, like a gay little child who might suddenly appear in a doorway. "
― Sarah Orne Jewett ,
4 " I now remembered that Mrs. Todd had told me one day that Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading. "
5 " There are plenty of people dragging themselves miserably through the world, because they are clogged and fettered with work for which they have no fitness... I can't help believing that nothing is better than to find one's work early and hold fast to it, and put all one's heart into it. "
― Sarah Orne Jewett , A Country Doctor
6 " A community narrows down and grows dreadful ignorant when it is shut up to its own affairs, and gets no knowledge of the outside world except from a cheap, unprincipled paper. "
― Sarah Orne Jewett , The Country of the Pointed Firs
7 " It was mortifying to find how strong the habit of idle speech may become in one’s self. One need not always be saying something in this noisy world. "
― Sarah Orne Jewett , The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories
8 " 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. "
9 " 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. "
10 " Find your quiet center of life and write from that to the world. "
11 " It does seem so pleasant to talk with an old acquaintance that knows what you know. I see so many of these new folks nowadays, that seem to have neither past nor future. 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. "
12 " Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of. "
13 " We who were her neighbors were full of gayety, which was but the reflected light from her beaming countenance. It was not the first time that I was full of wonder at the waste of human ability in this world, as a botanist wonders at the wastefulness of nature, the thousand seeds that die, the unused provision of every sort. The reserve force of society grows more and more amazing to one's thought. "
14 " The road was new to me, as roads always are, going back. "
15 " So we die before our own eyes; so we see some chapters of our lives come to their natural end. "
16 " T’aint’ no use to look for public sperit ‘less you’ve got some yourself. "
― Sarah Orne Jewett , Novels and Stories: Deephaven / A Country Doctor / The Country of the Pointed Firs / Dunnet Landing Stories / Selected Stories and Sketches
17 " Then I had the good of my reading,” he explained presently. “I had no books; the pastor spoke but little English, and all his books were foreign; but I used to say over all I could remember. The old poets little knew what comfort they could be to a man. I was well acquainted with the works of Milton, but up there it did seem to me as if Shakespeare was the king; he has his sea terms very accurate, and some beautiful passages were calming to the mind. I could say them over until I shed tears; there was nothing beautiful to me in that place but the stars above and those passages of verse. "
18 " be brisk, be splendid, and be public. "
― Sarah Orne Jewett , Martha's Lady
19 " Through this piece of rough pasture ran a huge shape of stone like the great backbone of an enormous creature. At the end, near the woods, we could climb up on it and walk along to the highest point; there above the circle of pointed firs we could look down over all the island, and could see the ocean that circled this and a hundred other bits of island-ground, the mainland shore and all the far horizons. It gave a sudden sense of space, for nothing stopped the eye or hedged one in,—that sense of liberty in space and time which great prospects always give. "
20 " Tact is after all a kind of mind-reading. "
