Quotes from Dear Enemy

“The more I study men, the more I realize that they are nothing in the world but boys grown too big to be spankable.”
― Jean Webster, quote from Dear Enemy

“Good manners are not merely snobbish ornaments, as Mrs. Lippett's regime appeared to believe. They mean self-discipline and thought for others, and my children have got to learn them.”
― Jean Webster, quote from Dear Enemy

“Aren't men funny? When they want to pay you the greatest compliment in their power, they naively tell you that you have a masculine mind. There is one compliment, incidentally, that I shall never be paying him. I cannot honestly say that he has a quickness of perception almost feminine.”
― Jean Webster, quote from Dear Enemy

“You remember that illuminated text over the dining-room door--"The Lord Will Provide." We've painted it out, and covered the spot with rabbits. It's all very well to teach so easy a belief to normal children, who have a proper family and roof behind them; but a person whose only refuge in distress will be a park bench must learn a more militant creed than that.”
― Jean Webster, quote from Dear Enemy

“The Lord has given you two hands and a brain and a big world to use them in. Use them well, and you will be provided for; use them ill, and you will want,”
― Jean Webster, quote from Dear Enemy

“Dear Judy: Your letter is here. I have read it twice, and with amazement. Do I understand that Jervis has given you, for a Christmas present, the making over of the John Grier Home into a model institution, and that you have chosen me to disburse the money? Me - I, Sallie McBride, the head of an orphan asylum! My poor people, have you lost your senses, or have you become addicted to the use of opium, and is the raving of two fevered imaginations? I am exactly as well fitted to take care of one hundred children as to become the curator of a zoo.”
― Jean Webster, quote from Dear Enemy

“The awful thing about a vacation is that the moment it begins your happiness is already clouded by its approaching end.”
― Jean Webster, quote from Dear Enemy

“It's nice to look forward to, isn't it—a life of work and play and little daily adventures side by side with somebody you love?”
― Jean Webster, quote from Dear Enemy

“Estoy pasando por un cambio total de mi carácter. Odio la inestabilidad. Me asusta la idea de ver mi vida desorganizada.”
― Jean Webster, quote from Dear Enemy

“see marriage as a man must, a good, sensible workaday institution; but awfully curbing to one's liberty. Somehow, after you're married forever, life has lost its feeling of adventure. There aren't any romantic possibilities waiting to surprise you around each corner.”
― Jean Webster, quote from Dear Enemy

“The mere idea that you are not in a place for the rest of your life gives you an awfully unstable feeling. That's why trial marriages would never work. You've got to feel you're in a thing irrevocably and forever in order to buckle down and really put your whole mind into making it a success.”
― Jean Webster, quote from Dear Enemy

“¡Qué graciosos son los hombres! Cuando quieren hacernos un cumplido dicen que tenemos una mentalidad masculina.”
― Jean Webster, quote from Dear Enemy

“He compuesto un poema a la victoria:
¡Quién lo hubiera creído!
¡El doctor MacRae ha sonreído!
¡Es verdad!”
― Jean Webster, quote from Dear Enemy

“He paid me another visit this afternoon. I invited him to accommodate himself in one of Mrs. Lippett's electric-blue chairs, and then sat down opposite to enjoy the harmony. He was dressed in a mustard-colored homespun, with a dash of green and a glint of yellow in the weave, a "heather mixture" calculated to add life to a dull Scotch moor. Purple socks and a red tie, with an amethyst pin, completed the picture. Clearly, your paragon of a doctor is not going to be of much assistance in”
― Jean Webster, quote from Dear Enemy

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Popular quotes

“We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Here again we come up against what I have called the “intolerable compliment.” Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life—the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child—he will take endless trouble—and would doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Problem of Pain

“When I joined the regiment my comrades said to me, there is one beast we fear more than the foe. An army marches on its stomach, so ’tis plain to see, that fool we call the cook has got to go!   O the cook! O the cook! If words could kill, or just a dirty look, he’d have snuffed it long ago, turned his paws up doncha know, he’d be gladly written off the record book!   What a greasy fat old toad, that assassin of the road, we tried to hire him to the enemy. But they smelt the stew he made, mercy on us they all prayed, we’ll surrender, you can have him back for free!   O the cook! O the cook! He could poison a battalion with his chuck. I’ve seen him boilin’ cabbage, an’ the filthy little savage, takes a bath in it to wash off all the muck!   He made a batch of scones, big grey lumpy solid ones, the Sergeant lost four teeth at just one bite. Then an officer ordered me, sling them at the enemy, an’ those that we don’t slay we’ll put to flight!   O the cook! O the cook! He’s stirring porridge with his rusty hook. Playin’ hopscotch with the toast, he’s the one that we hate most, tonight we’re goin’ to roast that bloomin’ cook!”   A”
― Brian Jacques, quote from Rakkety Tam

“What she didn't understand, she being spiritual and seeing religion as spirit, was that it took religion to save me from the spirit world, from orbiting the earth like Lucifer and the angels, that it took nothing less than touching the thread off the misty interstates and eating Christ himself to make me mortal man again and let me inhabit my own flesh and love her in the morning.”
― Walker Percy, quote from Love in the Ruins

“كان إيقاع الحياة هو مقياس الزمن في القطب الشمالي”
― Jean Craighead George, quote from Julie of the Wolves

“don't be serious , be sincere”
― Chetan Bhagat, quote from Revolution 2020: Love, Corruption, Ambition

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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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