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

You cannot write on the heart of another what you do not feel yourself.

The world is full of happy people but no one ever hears of them. You have to fight and make a scandal to get in the papers. No one knows about all the happy people.

no one in the whole world knows all a man's bignesses and all his littlenesses as his wife does.

To my way of thinking and working, the greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to leave him with a higher ideal of life than he had when he began. If in one small degree it shows him where he can be...gentler, saner, cleaner, kindlier...it is a wonder-working book. If it opens his eyes to one beauty in nature he never saw for himself and leads him one step toward the God of the Universe, it is a beneficial book.

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

Every intoxicating delight of early spring was in the air. The breeze that fanned her cheek was laden with subtle perfume and the crisp, fresh odor of unfolding leaves.