“It was Christmas Eve. Big snowflakes fluttered slowly through the air like white feathers and made all of the Heavenly Valley smooth and white and quiet and beautiful.
Tall fir trees stood up to their knees in snow and their outstretched hands were heaped with it. Those that were bare of leaves wore soft white fur on their scrawny, reaching arms and all the stumps and low bushes had been turned into fat white cupcakes.”
― Betty MacDonald, quote from Nancy and Plum
“Miss Appleby, her library books, and her story-telling sessions were very popular with all the children in Heavenly Valley. To Nancy and Plum they were a magic carpet that whisked them out of the dreariness and drudgery of their lives at Mrs. Monday's and transported them to palaces in India, canals in Holland, pioneer stockades during the Indian wars, cattle ranches in the West, mountains in Switzerland, pagodas in China, igloos in Alaska, jungles in Africa, castles in England, slums in London, gardens in Japan, or most important of all, into happy homes where there were mothers and fathers and no Mrs. Mondays or Marybelles.”
― Betty MacDonald, quote from Nancy and Plum
“Nancy grabbed Plum's hand and together they ran around the last curve and then they were leaning against the old stone wall that marked Lookout Hill. Far, far down below them, a river was trying to wriggle its way out of a steep canyon. Over to the right, thick green hills crowded close to each other to share one filmy white cloud. To the left, as far as they could see the land flowed into valleys that shaded from a pale watery green, through lime, emerald, jade, leaf, forest to a dark, dark, bluish-green, almost black. The rivers were like inky lines, the ponds like ink blots.”
― Betty MacDonald, quote from Nancy and Plum
“After splashing icy water on their faces and rubbing them fiery red with one of the rough sweet-smelling towels, they came in and took their places at the big kitchen table. This morning the table wore a bright red-and-white checked cloth and a pot of red geraniums. Mrs. Campbell handed the girls their plates, each with a slice of ham and half of a crisp, tan waffle.”
― Betty MacDonald, quote from Nancy and Plum
“Shyly Nancy and Plum sat down at the table while Mrs. Campbell heaped pink-flowered plates with baked beans, sausage cakes ad salad, passed a steaming plate of brown bread, cut them off generous pieces of the pat of new butter and handed them big mugs of ice-cold milk.”
― Betty MacDonald, quote from Nancy and Plum
“God is great and God is good,
And we thank Him for this food.
By His hand may we be led,
Give us Lord or daily bread.”
― Betty MacDonald, quote from Nancy and Plum
“I never feel that the things I tell Mrs. Monday are lies. I think that lies are only when you want not to tell the truth. With Mrs. Monday I want to tell the truth but life is easier if I don't.”
― Betty MacDonald, quote from Nancy and Plum
“Well, whatever you and Nancy decide to be when you grow up, I know that you'll be happy because you have discovered the comfort and joy of reading.”
― Betty MacDonald, quote from Nancy and Plum
“All of life is a contest. The weak against the strong - the stupid against the clever - the honest against the dishonest.”
― Betty MacDonald, quote from Nancy and Plum
Betty MacDonald
Born place: in Boulder, Colorado, The United States
Born date March 26, 1908
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“They say the day the Governor arrived, the ravens did too.”
― Kiran Millwood Hargrave, quote from The Girl of Ink and Stars
“I have decided to sleep under the stars... Tonight heaven is my roof, and the hedges my walls... The field folds me in soft wings.”
― John Lewis-Stempel, quote from Meadowland: the private life of an English field
“More energy is needed to rise a millimetre above a neutron star's surface than to break completely free of Earth's gravity. A pen dropped from a height of one metre would impact with the energy of a ton of TNT (although the intense gravity on a neutron star's surface would actually, of course, squash any such objects instantly). A projectile would need to attain half the speed of light to escape its gravity; conversely, anything that fell freely onto a neutron star from a great height would impact at more than half the speed of light.”
― Martin J. Rees, quote from Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe
“We do other creatures an injustice and ourselves a disservice when we forget from where our intelligence came. It did not come for free. In our distant evolutionary past we went down a certain road, a road that wolves, for whatever reason, did not travel. We can be neither blamed nor congratulated for the road we took. There was no choice involved. In evolution, there never is. But while there is no choice involved, there are consequences. Our complexity, our sophistication, our art, our culture, our science, our truths—our, as we like to see it, greatness: all of this we purchased, and the coin was schemes and deception. Machination and mendacity lie at the core of our superior intelligence, like worms coiled at the core of an apple.”
― Mark Rowlands, quote from The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death, and Happiness
“Men are so easily drawn to fake things.”
― Lisa Lutz, quote from The Passenger
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