Kate Douglas Wiggin · 184 pages
Rating: (30.7K votes)
“The soul grows into lovely habits as easily as into ugly ones, and the moment a life begins to blossom into beautiful words and deeds, that moment a new standard of conduct is established, and your eager neighbors look to you for a continuous manifestation of the good cheer, the sympathy, the ready wit, the comradeship, or the inspiration, you once showed yourself capable of. Bear figs for a season or two, and the world outside the orchard is very unwilling you should bear thistles.”
“Miranda Sawyer had a heart, of course, but she had never used it for any other purpose than the pumping and circulating of blood.”
“There are certain narrow, umimaginative, and autocratic old people who seem to call out the most mischievous and sometimes the worst traits in children.”
“Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World,
With the wonderful water round you curled,
And the wonderful grass upon your breast,
World, you are beautifully drest!”
“Rebecca's eyes were like faith,—"the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Under her delicately etched brows they glowed like two stars, their dancing lights half hidden in lustrous darkness. Their glance was eager and full of interest, yet never satisfied; their steadfast gaze was brilliant and mysterious, and had the effect of looking directly through the obvious to something beyond, in the object, in the landscape, in you. They had never been accounted for, Rebecca's eyes. The school teacher and the minister at Temperance had tried and failed; the young artist who came for the summer to sketch the red barn, the ruined mill, and the bridge ended by giving up all these local beauties and devoting herself to the face of a child,—a small, plain face illuminated by a pair of eyes carrying such messages, such suggestions, such hints of sleeping power and insight, that one never tired of looking into their shining depths, nor of fancying that what one saw there was the reflection of one's own thought.”
“Sometimes the ones you trust aren't the most trustworthy. Just better actors.”
“We believe human begins have existed for only a small fraction of cosmic history, because human race has been improving so rapidly in knowledge and technology that if people had been around for millions of years, the human race would be much further along in it's mastery.”
“Tod crossed his arms over his snug white T-shirt, silently giving me the floor. Fortunately, I was prepared.
"Sabine ambushed me in the hall this morning and gave me a lecture on sex."
Tod's brow's rose halfway to his hairline.
"I hope you took notes...”
“He grabbed me by my jacket lapels, pulled me to him, and kissed me. His tongue touched mine and I got a rush that was just a millimeter below climax. His hands slid inside my jacket and circled my waist. He was hard against me. And suddenly nothing mattered but a Ranger-induced orgasm. I wanted one. Now. The hell with Eddie DeChooch. One of these days he’d drive himself into a bridge abutment and that’d be the end of that.”
“The goal of my life isn’t just…to be happy.”
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