Source: The Descendant
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Famous Ellen Glasgow Quotes
“Borrowed illusions are better than none.”
Source: The Descendant
Source: Perfect Companionship: Ellen Glasgow's Selected Correspondence with Women
Source: Letters of Ellen Glasgow
“The hardest thing for me is the sense of impermanence. All passes; nothing returns.”
Source: Letters of Ellen Glasgow
Source: Works
Source: The Descendant
Source: Letters of Ellen Glasgow
Source: Works
Source: Works
“The truth is I've got the land on my back, an' it's drivin' me. Land is a hard driver.”
Source: Works
Source: The Voice of the People
Source: Works
“to be honest and yet popular is almost as difficult in literature as it is in life.”
Source: Works
Source: Vein of Iron
“Evidently, whatever else marriage might prevent, it was not a remedy for isolation of spirit.”
Source: Works
“marriage is mostly puttin' up with things, I reckon, when it ain't makin' believe.”
Source: The Miller of Old Church
“What a man marries for's hard to tell ... an' what a woman marries for's past findin' out.”
“Given two tempers and the time, the ordinary marriage produces anarchy.”
Source: The Descendant
Source: Letters of Ellen Glasgow
“nations decay from within more often than they surrender to outward assault.”
“Nothing is more trying than nerves to people who have none.”
Source: Vein of Iron
“the great novels have marched with the years. They are the contemporaries of time.”
Source: Works
“For me, the novel is experience illumined by imagination.”
Source: Letters of Ellen Glasgow
“Life has taught me that the greatest tragedy is not to die too soon but to live too long.”
Source: Letters of Ellen Glasgow
Source: In This Our Life
“It is easy to convince a man who already thinks as you do.”
Source: The Battle Ground
“Pessimism is the affectation of youth, the reality of age.”
Source: The Descendant
“There is no monster more destructive than the inventive mind that has outstripped philosophy.”
“I never saw the man yet that came out of politics as clean as he went into 'em.”
Source: The Miller of Old Church
Source: The Old Dominion Edition of the Works of Ellen Glasgow: The Miller of Old Church
“a successful politician does not have convictions; he has emotions.”
Source: The Voice of the People
“I ain't never seen no head so level that it could bear the lettin' in of politics.”
Source: The Voice of the People
“convictions ... are always getting in the way of opportunities.”
Source: The Descendant
“Too much principle is often more harmful than too little.”
Source: The Descendant
“[Reformers] might be classified as a distinct species having eyes in the back of their heads.”
Source: The Descendant
“Words, like acts, become stale when they are repeated.”
Source: In This Our Life
Source: Works
“audacity is of all qualities the most youthful.”
Source: Works
“a self-made martyr is a poor thing.”
Source: Vein of Iron
“There is no state of satisfaction, because to himself no man is a success.”
Source: The Descendant
“It is human nature to overestimate the thing you've never had.”
Source: Works
Source: Works