Sarah Orne Jewett Quotes

We go so far in our vigorous observance of the first commandment, and our fear of worshiping strange gods, that sometimes we are in danger of forgetting that we must worship God himself. And worship is something different from a certain sort of constant church-going, or from even trying to be conformers and to keep our own laws and our neighbors’.

Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of.

In the life of each of us there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness.

A community narrows down and grows dreadful ignorant when it is shut up to its own affairs, and gets no knowledge of the outside world except from a cheap, unprincipled paper.

I saw William Blackett’s escaping sail already far from land, and Captain Littlepage was sitting behind his closed window as I passed by, watching for some one who never came. I tried to speak to him, but he did not see me. There was a patient look on the old man’s face, as if the world were a great mistake and he had nobody with whom to speak his own language or find companionship.

The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper — whether little or great, it belongs to Literature.

Your patience may have long to wait, Whether in little things or great, But all good luck, you soon will learn, Must come to those who nobly earn. Who hunts the hay-field over Will find the four-leaved clover.

I couldn't help thinkin' if she was as far out o' town as she was out o' tune, she wouldn't get back in a day.

What has made this nation great? Not its heroes but its households.

The coast of Maine was in former years brought so near to foreign shores by its busy fleet of ships that among the older men and women one still finds a surprising proportion of travelers. Each seaward-stretching headland with its high-set houses,

Find your quiet center of life and write from that to the world.

It seems to me like stealing, for men and women to live in the world and do nothing to make it better.

Do you know that I have understood something lately better than I ever did before — it is that success and happiness are not things of chance with us, but of choice. I can see how we might so easily have had a dull summer here. Of course it is our own fault if the events of our lives are hindrances; it is we who make them bad or good. Sometimes it is a conscious choice, but oftener unconscious. I suppose we educate ourselves for taking the best of life or the worst, do not you?

be brisk, be splendid, and be public.

The warm sun kissed the earth To consecrate thy birth, And from his close embrace Thy radiant face Sprang into sight, A blossoming delight.