“Suddenly it seemed to me that I looked back from a great distance on that smile and saw it all again - the smile and the day, the whole sunny, sad, funny, wonderful day and all the days that we had spent here together. What was I going to do when such days came no more? There could not be many; for we were a family growing old. And how would I learn to live without these people? I who needed them so little that I could stay away all year - what should I do without them?”
― Jetta Carleton, quote from The Moonflower Vine
“Yet none of these things gave him confidence. All they gave him was egotism, which is less the conviction of one's worth than the desire for that conviction.”
― Jetta Carleton, quote from The Moonflower Vine
“Nothing came in reasonable measure, it seemed, not water or sunshine or sorrow. But joy, too, is immoderate sometimes, and that makes up for the rest.”
― Jetta Carleton, quote from The Moonflower Vine
“But very early they understood that playing was somewhat suspect, allowed through indulgence, a trivial pastime soon outgrown, and only about twice removed from sin. Pleasure was only once-removed.”
― Jetta Carleton, quote from The Moonflower Vine
“I ran to the window and looked out. It was the prettiest morning I ever saw, and I’ve seen a lot of pretty ones in my day. I get up looking for them. We”
― Jetta Carleton, quote from The Moonflower Vine
“She went outside and down the path, pausing by the smokehouse to county the moon flower pods. Another day or two and they would be ready to bloom. The flowers were so lovely, they lasted so short a time. It was almost like the children's visit, something you looked forward to all year, then it came, and you enjoyed it so much, and then it was over, in no time. Maybe that's the way it should be...”
― Jetta Carleton, quote from The Moonflower Vine
Jetta Carleton
Born place: Holden, MO, The United States
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“I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed.”
― Annie Dillard, quote from Holy the Firm
“There are many reasons for a person to lie, but to have a reason to tell the truth, you much have a deep belief, and great courage.”
― Susan Campbell Bartoletti, quote from The Boy Who Dared
“..we have become wealthy, and wealth is the prelude to art. In every country where centuries of physical effort have accumulated the means for luxury and leisure, culture has followed as naturally as vegetation grows in a rich and watered soil. To have become wealthy was the first necessity; a people too must live before it can philosophize. No doubt we have grown faster than nations usually have grown; and the disorder of our souls is due to the rapidity of our development. We are like youths disturbed and unbalanced, for a time, by the sudden growth and experiences of puberty. But soon our maturity will come; our minds will catch up with our bodies, our culture with our possessions. Perhaps there are greater souls than Shakespeare's, and greater minds than Plato's, waiting to be born. When we have learned to reverence liberty as well as wealth, we too shall have our Renaissance.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers
“The skin of everyday appearances stretched over such shamelessness, such consuming explosions of lust.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Lives of Girls and Women
“Only a few details have survived from Temujin’s earliest childhood, and they do not suggest that he was highly valued by his father. His father once accidentally left him behind when they moved to another camp.”
― Jack Weatherford, quote from Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
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