Why is it that the people with whom one loves to be silent are also the very ones with whom one loves to talk?

The soul grows into lovely habits as easily as into ugly ones, and the moment a life begins to blossom into beautiful words and deeds, that moment a new standard of conduct is established, and your eager neighbors look to you for a continuous manifestation of the good cheer, the sympathy, the ready wit, the comradeship, or the inspiration, you once showed yourself capable of. Bear figs for a season or two, and the world outside the orchard is very unwilling you should bear thistles.

Miranda Sawyer had a heart, of course, but she had never used it for any other purpose than the pumping and circulating of blood.

If I haven't anything to write, I am just as anxious to 'take my pen in hand' as though I had a message to deliver, a cause to plead, or a problem to unfold. Nothing but writing rests me; only then do I seem completely myself!

There are certain narrow, umimaginative, and autocratic old people who seem to call out the most mischievous and sometimes the worst traits in children.

Some folks mistakes all they see for all there is.

Father doesn't think very sudden, but he thinks awful strong.