Sarah Orne Jewett Quotes

Conformity is the inspiration of much second-rate virtue.

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

"Step in some afternoon," he said, as affectionately as if I were a fellow-shipmaster wrecked on the lee shore of age like himself.

So we always keep the same hearts, though our outer framework fails and shows the touch of time.

It had also affected the old fishermen's hard complexions, until one fancied that when Death claimed them it could only be with the aid, not of any slender modern dart, but the good serviceable harpoon of a seventeenth century woodcut.

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

To let God make us, instead of painfully trying to make ourselves; to follow the path that his love shows us, instead of through conceit or cowardice or mockery choosing another; to trust Him for our strength and fitness as the flowers do, simply giving ourselves back to Him in grateful service, — this is to keep the laws that give us the freedom of the city in which there is no longer any night of bewilderment or ignorance or uncertainty.

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

As for books, she will take to them of her own accord quite soon enough, and in such weather as this I think one day in the fields is worth five in the school-house.

When one really knows a village like this and its surroundings, it is like becoming acquainted with a single person. The process of falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.

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

It was mortifying to find how strong the habit of idle speech may become in one’s self. One need not always be saying something in this noisy world.

You must find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world that holds offices, and all society... In short, you must write to the human heart, the great consciousness that all humanity goes to make up. Otherwise what might be strength in a writer is only crudeness, and what might be insight is only observation; sentiment falls to sentimentality - you can write about life, but never write life itself... To work in silence and with all one's heart, that is the writer's lot; he is the only artist who must be a solitary, and yet needs the widest outlook upon the world.

This is a very small world; we are all within hail of each other. I dare say when we get to Heaven there will not be a stranger to make friends with.

The process of falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.