Far worst of all, the fever had settled in Mary's eyes, and Mary was blind.

People used to have time to live and enjoy themselves, but there is no time anymore for anything but work, work, work.

We had no choice. Sadness was a dangerous as panthers and bears. the wilderness needs your whole attention.

Tact does for life just what lubricating oil does for machinery.

The enormous lake stretched flat and smooth and white all the way to the edge of the gray sky. Wagon tracks went away across it, so far that you could not see where they went; they ended in nothing at all.

Ma sighed gently and said, "A whole year gone, Charles." But Pa answered, cheerfully: "What's a year amount to? We have all the time there is.

The stream of passing years is like a river with people being carried along in the current. Some are swept along, protesting, fighting all the way, trying to swim back up the stream, longing for the shores that they have passed, clutching at anything to retard their progress, frightened by the onward rush of the strong current and in danger of being overwhelmed by the waters. Others go with the current freely, trusting themselves to the buoyancy of the water.