In Haverford on the Platte the townspeople still talk of Lucy Gayheart.

Life was so short that it meant nothing at all unless it were continually reinforced by something that endured; unless the shadows of individual existence came and went against a background that held together.

I first met Myra Henshawe when I was fifteen, but I had known her about ever since I could remember anything at all.

The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.

Too much information is rather deadening.

You must not begin to fret about the successes of cheap people. After all, what have they to do with you?

But she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions. It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.