I was left alone with this new feeling of lightness and content.
When boys and girls are growing up, life can't stand still, not even in the quietest of country towns; and they have to grow up, whether they will or no. That is what their elders are always forgetting.
Because he talked so little, his words had a peculiar force; they were not worn dull from constant use.
It was a peculiar combination of old-maidishness and licentiousness that made Cutter seem so despicable.
As Antonia said, the wholeworld was changed by the snow; we kept looking in vain for familiarlandmarks.
She was a woman who could not be taught, it is said, though she had a crude natural force which carried with people whose feelings were accessible and whose taste was not squeamish.
Antonia had the most trusting, responsive eyes in the world; love and credulousness seemed to look out of them with open faces.
She was satisfied with her success, but notelated. She was like someone in whom the faculty of becoming interested is worn out.
She danced every dance likea waltz, and it was always the same waltz - the waltz of coming home to something, of inevitable, fated return.
Misfortune seemed to settle like an evilbird on the roof of the log house, and to flap its wings there, warninghuman beings away.
Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones.
That silence seemed to ooze out of the ground, to hang under the foliage of the blackmaple trees with the bats and shadows.
You never really knew a man, he said, until you saw him die. Most men were game, and went without a grudge.
That hour always had the exultation of victory, of triumphant ending, like a hero's death - heroes who died young and gloriously. It was a sudden transfiguration, a lifting-up ofday.
And I guess everybody thinks about old times, even the happiest people.
But, you see, a body never knows what traits poverty might bring out in 'em. It makes a woman grasping to see her children want for things.
The quiet was delightful, and the ticking clock was the most pleasant of companions.
Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived.
In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones.
God has been very good to let me live to see a happy issue to those old wrongs.
At anyrate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete andgreat. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.
In the winter bleakness a hunger for colour came over people, like the Laplander's craving for fats and sugar.
Such silence and stillness and repose – immortal repose.
Antonia had always been one to leave images in the mind that did not fade, that grew stronger with time.
It’s better to be a stray dog in this world than a man without money. I’ve tried both ways and I know. A poor man stinks and God hates him.
Oh, that’s a cruelty of being poor; it leaves you at the mercy of such pigs! Money is a protection, a cloak; it can buy one quiet, and some sort of dignity.
It’s all very well to tell us to forgive our enemies; our enemies can’t hurt us very much. But, oh, what about forgiving our friends? That’s where the rub comes!
Yes, it’s he. He used to be a friend of mine. That’s a sad phrase, isn’t it?
I remembered whatthe conductor had said about her eyes. They were big and warm and fullof light, like the sun shining on brown pools in the wood.
The reckoning with his wife at the end of an escapade was something he counted on like the last powerful liqueur after a long dinner.
The prayers of all good people are good.