“I am not wise enough to say how much of all this squalor and wretchedness and hunger is the fault of the people themselves, how much of it belongs to circumstances and environment, how much is the result of past errors of government, how much is race, how much is religion. I only know that children should never be hungry, that there are ignorant human creatures to be taught how to live; and if it is a hard task, the sooner it is begun the better, both for teachers and pupils. It is comparatively easy to form opinions and devise remedies, when one knows the absolute truth of things; but it is so difficult to find the truth here, or at least there are so many and such different truths to weigh in the balance....”
Source: Penelope's Irish Experiences
“To be alive makes up for everything; there ought to be fears in my heart, but there aren't; something stronger sweeps them out; something like a wind.”
Source: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
“Having learned the trick of beating and loving and suffering, the poor faithful heart persisted, although it lived on memories and carried on its sentimental operations mostly in secret.”
Source: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
“Hugh refused to leave the scene of the action. He seated himself on the top stair in the hall, banged his head against the railing a few times, just by way of uncorking the vials of his wrath, and then subsided into gloomy silence, waiting to declare war if more “first girl babies” were thrust upon a family already surfeited with that unnecessary article.”
Source: The Birds' Christmas Carol
“The old stage coach was rumbling along the dusty road that runs from Maplewood to Riverboro. The day was as warm as midsummer, though it was only the middle of May, and Mr. Jeremiah Cobb was favoring the horses as much as possible, yet never losing sight of the fact that he carried the mail. The hills were many, and the reins lay loosely in his hands as he lolled back in his seat and extended one foot and leg luxuriously over the dashboard. His brimmed hat of worn felt was well pulled over his eyes, and revolved a quid of tobacco in his left cheek.”
Source: CHILDREN’S BOOKS – Premium Illustrated Collection: 11 Novels & 120+ Short Stories, Fairy Tales, Fables & Poems for Children (Including Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm Series & The Arabian Nights): New Chronicles of Rebecca, A Summer in a Cañon, Polly Oliver's Problem, The Birds' Christmas Carol, The Romance of a Christmas Card, Timothy's Quest, The Fairy Ring, Golden Numbers and many more
“It was not long after sunrise, and Stephen Waterman, fresh from his dip in the river, had scrambled up the hillside from the hut in the alder-bushes where he had made his morning toilet.”
Source: HOMESPUN TALES TRILOGY: Rose o' the River, The Old Peabody Pew & Susanna and Sue (Illustrated): Three Small Town Novels in One Volume
“Some folks mistakes all they see for all there is.”
Source: KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN – Ultimate Collection: 21 Novels & 130+ Short Stories, Fairy Tales and Poems for Children (Illustrated): Including Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm & Penelope Hamilton Series: Rose o' the River, A Summer in a Cañon, The Birds' Christmas Carol, Timothy's Quest, The Arabian Nights, Golden Numbers & many more
“The world is always a new plaything to children, while to the old it seems falling to pieces from sheer dryness. Everything loses its value with time, but it is not the fault of the fruit, but of the mouth and the tongue.”
“One cannot see callers, answer the telephone, go to luncheons or dinners, visit the dentist or shoemaker, address charitable organizations in or from a bed; therefore a bed, in my experience, is simply bristling with ideas.”
“There are some who possess the magic touch, the infectious spirit of enthusiasm; who have the same effect as a beautiful morning that never reaches noon. Under this spell one's mind is braced, one's spirit recreated; one is ready for any adventure, even if it only be the doing of the next distasteful task light-heartedly.”
“Pictures made in childhood are painted in bright hues.”
“Why is it that the people with whom one loves to be silent are also the very ones with whom one loves to talk?”
Source: PENELOPE’S PROGRESS – The Complete Series: Penelope's English Experiences, Penelope's Experiences in Scotland, Penelope's Irish Experiences & Penelope's Postscripts: Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton
“To make my diary a little different I am going to call it a Thought Book ... I have thoughts that I never can use unlesss I write them down, for Aunt Miranda always says, Keep your thoughts to yourself.”
Source: REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM & NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA (Children’s Book Classics): Adventure Novels
“the habit of generalizing from one particular, that mainstay of the cheap and obvious essayist, has rooted many fictions in the public eye. Nothing, for example can blot from my memory the profound, searching, and exhaustive analysis of a great nation which I learned in my small geography when I was a child, namely, 'The French are a gay and polite people fond of dancing and light wines.”
“you can never prove God; you can only find Him!”
Source: REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM & NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA (Children’s Book Classics): Adventure Novels
“Lord, I do not ask that Thou shouldst give me wealth; only show me where it is, and I will attend to the rest.”
Source: PENELOPE’S PROGRESS – The Complete Series: Penelope's English Experiences, Penelope's Experiences in Scotland, Penelope's Irish Experiences & Penelope's Postscripts: Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton
“Bear figs for a season or two, and the world outside the orchard is very unwilling you should bear thistles.”
Source: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
“Father doesn't think very sudden, but he thinks awful strong.”
Source: CHILDREN’S BOOKS – Premium Illustrated Collection: 11 Novels & 120+ Short Stories, Fairy Tales, Fables & Poems for Children (Including Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm Series & The Arabian Nights): New Chronicles of Rebecca, A Summer in a Cañon, Polly Oliver's Problem, The Birds' Christmas Carol, The Romance of a Christmas Card, Timothy's Quest, The Fairy Ring, Golden Numbers and many more
“You may have noted the fact that it is a person's virtues as often as his vices that make him difficult to live with.”
Source: KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN – Ultimate Collection: 21 Novels & 130+ Short Stories, Fairy Tales and Poems for Children (Illustrated): Including Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm & Penelope Hamilton Series: Rose o' the River, A Summer in a Cañon, The Birds' Christmas Carol, Timothy's Quest, The Arabian Nights, Golden Numbers & many more
“If I haven't anything to write, I am just as anxious to 'take my pen in hand' as though I had a message to deliver, a cause to plead, or a problem to unfold. Nothing but writing rests me; only then do I seem completely myself!”
“When, all at once, you find you have something precious you only dimly suspected was to be yours, you almost wish it hadn't come so soon.”
“There is nothing so debilitating to a naturally weak sense of humor as selling tickets behind a grating.”
Source: Penelope's Progress
“Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers, and sisters, aunts and cousins, but only one mother in the whole world.”
“It is very funny, but you do not always have to see people to love them. Just think about it, and see if it isn't so.”
Source: The Birds’ Christmas Carol (With Original Illustrations): Children’s Classic
“The soul grows into lovely habits as easily as into ugly ones, and the moment a life begins to blossom into beautiful words and deeds, that moment a new standard of conduct is established, and your eager neighbors look to you for a continuous manifestation of the good cheer, the sympathy, the ready wit, the comradeship, or the inspiration, you once showed yourself capable of. Bear figs for a season or two, and the world outside the orchard is very unwilling you should bear thistles.”
Source: REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM & NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA (Children’s Book Classics): Adventure Novels
“Miranda Sawyer had a heart, of course, but she had never used it for any other purpose than the pumping and circulating of blood.”
Source: REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM & NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA (Children’s Book Classics): Adventure Novels
“There is a kind of magicness about going far away and then coming back all changed.”
Source: REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM & NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA (Children’s Book Classics): Adventure Novels
“Maternal love, like an orange tree, buds and blossoms and bears at once. When a woman puts her finger for the first time into the tiny hand of her baby and feels that helpless clutch which tightens her very heartstrings, she is born again with her newborn child.”
“Every child born into the world is a new thought of God, an ever-fresh and radiant possibility.”
“Please drop a note to the clerk of the weather, and have a good, rousing snow-storm -- say on the twenty-second. None of your meek, gentle, nonsensical, shilly-shallying snow-storms; not the sort where the flakes float lazily down from the sky as if they didn't care whether they ever got here or not, and then melt away as soon as they touch the earth, but a regular business-like whizzing, whirring, blurring, cutting snow-storm, warranted to freeze and stay on!”
Source: KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN – Ultimate Collection: 21 Novels & 130+ Short Stories, Fairy Tales and Poems for Children (Illustrated): Including Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm & Penelope Hamilton Series: Rose o' the River, A Summer in a Cañon, The Birds' Christmas Carol, Timothy's Quest, The Arabian Nights, Golden Numbers & many more
“There are certain narrow, umimaginative, and autocratic old people who seem to call out the most mischievous and sometimes the worst traits in children.”
“A real Christmas baby was not to be lightly named.”
Source: Greatest Christmas Novels in One Volume: Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, Heidi, The Romance of a Christmas Card, The Little City of Hope, The Wonderful Life, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Peter Pan…
“To let blessed babies go dangling and dawdling without names, for months and months, was enough to ruin them for life.”
Source: The Birds’ Christmas Carol (With Original Illustrations): Children’s Classic
“Never miss a joy in this world of trouble-that's my theory!....
Happiness, like mercy,is twice blest: it blesses those most
intimately associated with it and it blesses all those who see
it, hear it, touch it or breathe the same atmosphere.”
“If you make children happy now, you will make them happy twenty years hence by the memory of it.”
Source: Children's Rights: A Book of Nursery Logic
