I want a human sermon. I don't care what Melchisedek, or Zerubbabel, or Kerenhappuk did, ages ago; I want to know what I am to do, and I want somebody besides a theological bookworm to tell me; somebody who is sometimes tempted and tried, and is not too dignified to own it; somebody like me, who is always sinning and repenting; somebody who is glad and sorry, and cries and laughs, and eats and drinks, and wants to fight when they are trodden on, and don't!
Fanny FernNowhere more than in New York does the contest between squalor and splendor so sharply present itself.
Fanny FernWell, it is a humiliating reflection, that the straightest road to a man's heart is through his palate.
Fanny FernI am convinced that there are times in everybody's experience when there is so much to be done, that the only way to do it is to sit down and do nothing.
Fanny FernYou are taken sick; you send for a physician; he comes in, stays ten minutes, prescribes for you a healing medicine, and charges you three or four dollars. You call this 'extortionate' - forgetting the medical books he must have waded through, the revolting dissections he must have witnessed and participated in, and the medical lectures he must have digested, to have enabled him to pronounce on your case so summarily and satisfactorily.
Fanny Fern