Quotes from Dear Enemy

Jean Webster ·  350 pages

Rating: (5.1K votes)


“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


About the author

Jean Webster
Born place: in Fredonia, New York, The United States
Born date July 24, 1876
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“I heard the phrases and I wanted all of me to call out in a song, a song that doesn't have words, a song that almost doesn't have noise. A lot of people take a short cut and call that feeling of song love. They just call it that because there isn't a way to describe it. But the word love doesn't describe the half of it. It doesn't do anything to bring to mind the song we all want so desperately to sing.”
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“There is a smile of love,
And there is a smile of deceit,
And there is a smile of smiles
In which these two smiles meet.

And there is a frown of hate,
And there is a frown of disdain,
And there is a frown of frowns
Which you strive to forget in vain,

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And it sticks in the deep backbone--
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