Myrtle Reed Quotes

A letter has distinct advantages. You can say all you want to say before the other person has a chance to put in a word.

At twenty, men love woman; at thirty, a woman; and at forty, women.

Impermanence is the very essence of joy-the drop of bitterness that enables one to perceive the sweet.

it is bad manners to contradict a guest. You must never insult people in your own house - always go to theirs.

Those who have been made great have first suffered.

Silence and reserve will give anyone a reputation for wisdom.

When we come to the sundown road, we need all the love we have managed to take with us from the summit of the hill.

In every life there is a perfect moment, like a flash of sun. We can shape our days by that, if we will - before by faith, and afterward by memory.

When we get civilised, I believe children will go by number until they get old enough to choose their own names.

The spirit in which one earns his daily bread means as much to his soul as the bread itself may mean to his body.

It all depends on the way you look at it. The point of view is everything in this world.

Youth asks no greater privilege than to fight its own battles. It is mistaken kindness to shield - it weakens one in the years to come.

Anger is a better weapon than tears; a burr commands more respect than a sensitive plant.

A man likes to feel that he is loved, a woman likes to be told.

No woman need fear the effect of absence upon the man who honestly loves her. The needle of the compass, regardless of intervening seas, points forever toward the north. Pitiful indeed is she who fails to be a magnet and blindly becomes a chain.

How strange it is that life must be nearly over, before one fully learns to live!

... sometimes, out of bitterness, the years distill forgiveness.

Conceit is lovable and unconcealed ; vanity is supreme selfishness, usually hidden.

Pedestals are always lonely.

Three things I have longed to see ... The sea serpent, a white rhinoceros, and an unselfish man.

Art, if it is art, will develop in whatever circumstances it is placed.

As if by magic, the love of the many comes with the love of the one.

I have a friend, physically magnificent, who combines within himself the intellect of a philosopher, the diplomacy of a statesman, the executive ability of the general of an army, the courtesy of a Chesterfield - and the emotions of a rabbit.

Did you ever read a love-letter that wasn't an evidence of idiocy - except your own?

Home is a place where we all do as we please - usually regardless of the others.

A good forgettery is a happier possession than a good memory.

There are many people who consider love a dream, but they usually grow to think of marriage as the cold breakfast.

There is a great deal of trouble in this world which is not caused by people keeping their mouths shut.

I've always thought my flowers had souls.

One uncongenial guest can ruin a dinner more easily than a poor salad, and that is saying a great deal.

When a little pleasure has flashed for a moment against the dark, I have made that jewel mine. I have hundreds of them ... I call it my Necklace of Perfect Joy. When the world goes wrong, I have only to close my eyes and remember all the links in my chain, set with gems, some large and some small, but all beautiful with the beauty which never fades. It is all I can take with me when I go. My material possessions must stay behind, but my Necklace of Perfect Joy will bring me happiness to the end, when I put it on, to be nevermore unclasped.

The heart's seasons seldom coincide with the calendar. Who among us has not been made desolate beyond all words upon some golden day when the little creatures of the air and meadow were life incarnate, from sheer joy of living? Who among us has not come home, singing, when the streets were almost impassable with snow, or met a friend with a happy, smiling face, in the midst of a pouring rain?

I experienced the discomfort of those who have moved mentally, but are still clamped, physically, to the places they have moved from.

It is personal vanity of the most flagrant type which intrudes itself, unasked, into other people's affairs. There are few of us who do not feel capable of ordering the daily lives of others, down to the most minute detail.

Penetrate deeply in the secret existence of anyone about you, even of the man or woman whom you count happiest, and you will come upon things they spend all their efforts to hide. Fair as the exterior may be, if you go in, you will find bare places, heaps of rubbish that can never be taken away, cold hearths, desolate altars, and windows veiled with cobwebs.

Five golden years, Heart of Mine, have we walked the way of life together, and there is not an hour I would have changed; there is no moment when I would have you other than you have been. It is the fashion these days, I know, to say that love ends at the altar, but it is not so. You and I have found the old dream of the world divinely true. It is neither a poet's fancy nor a trick of the imagination, but a thing of fadeless and unending beauty.

Married and unmarried women waste a great deal of time in feeling sorry for each other.

But somewhere on the great world the sun is always shining, and, just so sure as you live, it will sometime shine on you.

It seems to take a lifetime for us to learn that wisdom consists largely in a graceful acceptance of things that do not immediately concern us.

Nothing in the world was ever built without a dream at the beginning.

Marriage is the process by which a woman deprives herself of an escort.

I had thought, in my blindness, that the great things were the easiest to do, but now I see that drudgery is an inseparable part of everything worth while, and the more worth while it is, the more drudgery is involved.

A real love letter is absolutely ridiculous to everyone except the writer and the recipient.

... the song of the world is all of love.

Womankind suffers from three delusions: marriage will reform a man, a rejected lover is heartbroken for life, and if the other women were only out of the way, he would come back.

The river itself portrays humanity precisely, with its tortuous windings, its accumulation of driftwood, its unsuspected depths, and its crystalline shallows, singing in the Summer sun. Barriers may be built across its path, but they bring only power, as the conquering of an obstacle is always sure to do. Sometimes when the rocks and stone-clad hills loom large ahead, and eternity itself would be needed to carve a passage, there is an easy way around. The discovery of it makes the river sing with gladness and turns the murmurous deeps to living water, bright with ripples and foam.

There is only one path which leads to the house of forgiveness - that of understanding.

when one has learned to wait patiently, one has learned to live.