One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it's such a nice change from being young.

Taking somebody's sacrifices is like taking counterfeit money. You're only the poorer.

A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary.

Vermont tradition is based on the idea that group life should leave each person as free as possible to arrange his own life. This freedom is the only climate in which (we feel) a human being may create his own happiness. ... Character itself lies deep and secret below the surface, unknown and unknowable by others. It is the mysterious core of life, which every man or woman has to cope with alone, to live with, to conquer and put in order, or to be defeated by.

Father sticks to it that anything that promises to pay too much can't help being risky.

it was always insolent for a common man to take a chair in the presence of a lady - the word LADY, we may be sure, capitalized in her mind, and denoting not sex but rank.

the encounter with death is the great turning-point in the lives of those who live on.