“Knowing things will not harm you. Doing them is a different matter. What you know will be a protection. What you do ruins - if it is wrong.”
Source: The Harvester
“From an outside viewpoint it seems as if I had almost all a man could ask in reason. But when was a strong man in the grip of love ever reasonable? I think the Almighty took a pretty grave responsibility when He made men as He did. If I had been He, and understood the forces I was handling, I would have been too big a coward to do it.”
Source: The Harvester
“He did not want to fail, when the Bee Master had trusted him with the home and the possessions and the occupation that were all he had of his very own, and he did not know that as the storm drew nearer, as the clouds grew blacker, as the heat waves resolved themselves into definite flashes of lightning, as the night closed down black as velvet around him, he did not realize that his moral and mental forces were rising with the tide of the storm, that all the remnants of manhood left in his shaken body were gathering together for some sort of culmination, just as presently the storm would reach its height and then subside.”
Source: The Keeper of the Bees
“Reason may be depended upon to keep its balance when God gives the surcease of tears in time of trouble.”
Source: The Keeper of the Bees
“Ain’t it queer that she’d take to stones, bugs, and butterflies, and save them. Now they are going to bring her the very thing she wants the worst. Lord, but this is a funny world when you get to studying! Looks like things didn’t all come by accident. Looks as if there was a plan back of it, and somebody driving that knows the road, and how to handle the lines. Anyhow, Elnora’s in the wagon, and when I get out in the night and the dark closes around me, and I see the stars, I don’t feel so cheap.”
Source: A Girl of the Limberlost
“If anyone had asked him that morning concerning his idea of Heaven, he never would have dreamed of describing a place of gold-paved streets, crystal pillars, jewelled gates, and thrones of ivory. These things were beyond the man's comprehension and he would not have admired or felt at home in such magnificence if it had been materialized for him. He would have told you that a floor of last year's brown leaves, studded with myriad flower faces, big, bark-encased pillars of a thousand years, jewels on every bush, shrub, and tree, and tilting thrones on which gaudy birds almost burst themselves to voice the joy of life, while their bright-eyed little mates peered questioningly at him over nest rims——he would have told you that Medicine Woods on a damp, sunny May morning was Heaven.”
Source: The Harvester
“Be sure that you are right; and then go ahead.”
“we know by the odour that occasionally we are visited by skunks, which are not poetic but very beautiful.”
“the occasional cries of a lost loon, strayed from its flock in northern migration, fill the swamp with sounds of wailing.”
Source: The Song of the Cardinal
“The Cardinal ... It was as if a pulsing heart of flame passed by when he came winging through the orchard.”
Source: The Essential Gene Stratton-Porter Collection
“How a big majority of book critics and authors have come to believe and to teach that no book is true to life unless it is true to the worst in life, God knows.”
“One feature about Los Angeles that I particularly love is the chance for association with all kinds of creative artists, a thing I never before have had. I certainly do love a number of the writers, the painters, the musicians, and the sculptors that I meet here. ... Next to the sunshine, I appreciate it the most of anything in California.”
“Of two evils, I always choose the lesser.”
“To my way of thinking and working, the greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to force him to lay it down with a higher ideal of life than he had when he took it up.”
“the friend in need is the one who is the friend in deed; ... if people were not friends in need, there was every likelihood that they never would be friends again in any conditions that might obtain.”
Source: The White Flag
“When any man accumulates more than he can earn with his own hands, he begins to enrich himself at the expense of the youth, the sweat, the blood, the joy of his fellow men.”
Source: Wonder, Hope, Love, and Loss: The Selected Novels of Gene Stratton-Porter
“Now what is a guest? A thing of a day! A person who disturbs your routine and interferes with important concerns. Why should any one be grateful for company? Why should time and money be lavished on visitors? They come. You overwork yourself. They go. You are glad of it. You return the visit, because it's the only way to have back at them.”
Source: Gene Stratton-Porter Collection: A Girl of the Limberlost, Freckles, Laddie, The Harvester, A Daughter of the Land, At the Foot of the Rainbow, Her Fatther's Daughter, Michale O'Halloran
“What was money that it should make such dreadful things of men and women?”
Source: The White Flag
“Money was their God; work their religion.”
Source: A Daughter of the Land
“Nature always levies her tribute.”
Source: Gene Stratton-Porter Collection: A Girl of the Limberlost, Freckles, Laddie, The Harvester, A Daughter of the Land, At the Foot of the Rainbow, Her Fatther's Daughter, Michale O'Halloran
“My publishers will make any kind of a beautiful book I design and send in to them, but ... For poetry they have less use than a rooster would have for skates.”
“I do not believe there is any one study that can be taken up that will broaden the imagination, that will be the source from which will spring more deep thinking and sincere research than the study of astronomy.”
“The seasons run with swift feet.”
Source: The White Flag
“The wages of sin are the hardest debts on earth to pay, and they are always collected at inconvenient times and unexpected places.”
Source: Gene Stratton-Porter Collection: A Girl of the Limberlost, Freckles, Laddie, The Harvester, A Daughter of the Land, At the Foot of the Rainbow, Her Fatther's Daughter, Michale O'Halloran
“It really seems as if failure and hardship make more of a human being of folks than success.”
Source: Gene Stratton-Porter Collection: A Girl of the Limberlost, Freckles, Laddie, The Harvester, A Daughter of the Land, At the Foot of the Rainbow, Her Fatther's Daughter, Michale O'Halloran
“it takes the very wisest person there is to know when to talk, and when to keep still.”
Source: Gene Stratton-Porter Collection: A Girl of the Limberlost, Freckles, Laddie, The Harvester, A Daughter of the Land, At the Foot of the Rainbow, Her Fatther's Daughter, Michale O'Halloran
“Tears were a blessing; they were a relief; they did wash the ache from the heart, ease brain strain, and encourage the soul.”
Source: The White Flag
“a trouble shared is a trouble half endured.”
Source: The Keeper of the Bees
“I don't so much mind the falling, but I do seem to select the hardest spots to light on.”
Source: A Daughter of the Land
“there was nothing in the whole world so dreadful as the power of riches wrongly used.”
Source: The White Flag
“no one in the whole world knows all a man's bignesses and all his littlenesses as his wife does.”
Source: Gene Stratton-Porter Collection: A Girl of the Limberlost, Freckles, Laddie, The Harvester, A Daughter of the Land, At the Foot of the Rainbow, Her Fatther's Daughter, Michale O'Halloran
“I write as the birds sing, because I must, and usually from the same source of inspiration.”
“We never know the timber of a man's soul until something cuts into him deeply and brings the grain out strong. You've the making of a mighty fine piece of furniture.”
Source: Gene Stratton-Porter Collection: A Girl of the Limberlost, Freckles, Laddie, The Harvester, A Daughter of the Land, At the Foot of the Rainbow, Her Fatther's Daughter, Michale O'Halloran
“Sometimes it seems to me that the more we get hurt in this world the decenter it makes us.”
Source: The Essential Gene Stratton-Porter Collection
“You cannot write on the heart of another what you do not feel yourself.”
“There was an exquisitely beautiful conception in my brain when I did this piece of work all alone from midnight until morning after the experience of a wonderful day. But I was not able to make the consummation anywhere nearly as beautiful as the inspiration. That, I suppose, is the cry of every heart struggling for self-expression.”
“In the economy of nature nothing is ever lost. I cannot belive that the soul of man shall prove the one exception”
Source: Field O' My Dreams: The Poetry of Gene Stratton-Porter
“There never was a moment in my life, when I felt so in the Presence, as I do now. I feel as if the Almighty were so real, and so near, that I could reach out and touch Him, as I could this wonderful work of His, if I dared. I feel like saying to Him: 'To the extent of my brain power I realize Your presence, and all it is in me to comprehend of Your power. Help me to learn, even this late, the lessons of Your wonderful creations. Help me to unshackle and expand my soul to the fullest realization of Your wonders. Almighty God, make me bigger, make me broader!”
Source: A Girl of the Limberlost
“Is he well educated?" "Yes, I think so, as far as he's gone," I answered. "Of course he will go on being educated every day of his life, same as father. He says it is all rot about 'finishing' your education. You never do. You learn more important things each day.”
Source: Gene Stratton-Porter Collection: A Girl of the Limberlost, Freckles, Laddie, The Harvester, A Daughter of the Land, At the Foot of the Rainbow, Her Fatther's Daughter, Michale O'Halloran
“But Aunt Margaret doesn't like boys," objected Elnora. "Well, she likes me, and I used to be a boy.”
Source: Gene Stratton-Porter Collection: A Girl of the Limberlost, Freckles, Laddie, The Harvester, A Daughter of the Land, At the Foot of the Rainbow, Her Fatther's Daughter, Michale O'Halloran
“The world is full of happy people but no one ever hears of them. You have to fight and make a scandal to get in the papers. No one knows about all the happy people.”
“I know men and women. An honourable man is an honourable man, and a liar is a liar; both are born and not made. One cannot change to the other any more than that same old leopard can change its spots. After a man tells a woman the first untruth of that sort, the others come piling thick, fast, and mountain high.”
Source: Wonder, Hope, Love, and Loss: The Selected Novels of Gene Stratton-Porter
“To my way of thinking and working, the greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to leave him with a higher ideal of life than he had when he began. If in one small degree it shows him where he can be...gentler, saner, cleaner, kindlier...it is a wonder-working book. If it opens his eyes to one beauty in nature he never saw for himself and leads him one step toward the God of the Universe, it is a beneficial book.”
Source: The Essential Gene Stratton-Porter Collection
“If you are lazy, and accept your lot, you may live in it. If you are willing to work, you can write your name anywhere you choose.”
Source: Gene Stratton-Porter Collection: A Girl of the Limberlost, Freckles, Laddie, The Harvester, A Daughter of the Land, At the Foot of the Rainbow, Her Fatther's Daughter, Michale O'Halloran
“I do not know why it is the fate of the world always to want something different from what life gives them.”
Source: A Girl of the Limberlost
“Do you know that being a stranger is the hardest thing that can happen to any one in all this world?”
Source: Laddie: A True Blue Story
“Every intoxicating delight of early spring was in the air. The breeze that fanned her cheek was laden with subtle perfume and the crisp, fresh odor of unfolding leaves.”
Source: The Song of the Cardinal
“What you are lies with you. If you are lazy, and accept your lot, you may live in it. If you are willing to work, you can write your name anywhere you choose, among the only ones who live beyond the grave in this world, the people who write books that help, make exquisite music, carve statues, paint pictures, and work for others. Never mind the calico dress, and the coarse shoes. Work at you books, and before long you will hear yesterday's tormentors boasting that they were once classmates of yours.”
Source: The Essential Gene Stratton-Porter Collection
“Being dead was one thing, getting ready for a wedding another.”
Source: Laddie: A True Blue Story
“Nature can be trusted to work her own miracle in the heart of any man whose daily task keeps him alone among her sights, sounds and silences.”
Source: Gene Stratton-Porter Collection: A Girl of the Limberlost, Freckles, Laddie, The Harvester, A Daughter of the Land, At the Foot of the Rainbow, Her Fatther's Daughter, Michale O'Halloran
