The wages of sin are the hardest debts on earth to pay, and they are always collected at inconvenient times and unexpected places.

Now what is a guest? A thing of a day! A person who disturbs your routine and interferes with important concerns. Why should any one be grateful for company? Why should time and money be lavished on visitors? They come. You overwork yourself. They go. You are glad of it. You return the visit, because it's the only way to have back at them.

To my way of thinking and working, the greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to force him to lay it down with a higher ideal of life than he had when he took it up.

Nature can be trusted to work her own miracle in the heart of any man whose daily task keeps him alone among her sights, sounds and silences.

we know by the odour that occasionally we are visited by skunks, which are not poetic but very beautiful.

But Aunt Margaret doesn't like boys," objected Elnora. "Well, she likes me, and I used to be a boy.

The Cardinal ... It was as if a pulsing heart of flame passed by when he came winging through the orchard.