Quotes from The Yearling

“Now he understood. This was death. Death was a silence that gave back no answer.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks...Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life...I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on.

—Penny Baxter”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“He lay down beside the fawn. He put one arm across its neck. It did not seem to him that he could ever be lonely again.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“He was addled with April. He was dizzy with Spring. He was as drunk as Lem Forrester on a Saturday night.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“This, then, was hunger. This was what his mother had meant when she had said, "We'll all go hongry." He had laughed, for he had thought he had known hunger, and it was faintly pleasant. He knew now that it had been only appetite. This was another thing.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“You kin tame arything, son, excusin’ the human tongue.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“They listened with flattering attention. He was filled with enthusiasm. He began at the beginning and tried to tell it as he thought Penny would do. Half-way through, he looked down at the cake. He lost interest in the account.

"Then Pa shot him," he ended abruptly.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“The wild animals seemed less predatory to him than people he had known.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“He watched the sun rise beyond the grape arbor. In the thin golden light the young leaves and tendrils of the Scuppernong were like Twink Weatherby's hair. He decided that sunrise and sunset both gave him a pleasantly sad feeling. The sunrise brought a wild, free sadness; the sunset, a lonely yet a comforting one. He indulged his agreeable melancholy until the earth under him turned from gray to lavender and then to the color dried corn husks.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“Don't go gittin faintified on me.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“He would be lonely all his life. But a man took it for his share and went on.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“Eulalie in a remote fashion belonged to him, Jody, to do with as he pleased, if only to throw potatoes at her.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“Jody said, "Ma, you're shore good."

"Oh, yes. When it's rations."

"Well, I'd a heap ruther you was good about rations and mean about other things."

"Oh, I be mean, be I?"

"Only about jest a very few things," he soothed her.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“He wrote:

Dear ollever; yor ol twinkk has dun gode up the rivver. im gladd. yor friend jody.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“You do somethin' for me? Go tell Twink I'll meet her at the old grove Tuesday about dusk-dark."

Jody was frozen.

He burst out, "I won't do it. I hate her. Ol' yellow-headed somethin'.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“He lay down on his pallet and drew the fawn down beside him. He often lay so with it in the shed, or under the live oaks in the heat of the day. He lay with his head against its side. its ribs lifted and fell with its breathing. It rested its chin on his hand. It had a few short hairs there that prickled him. He had been cudgeling his wits for an excuse to bring the fawn inside at night to sleep with him, and now he had one that could not be disputed. He would smuggle it in and out as long as possible, in the name of peace.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“I'm eating' it quick... but I'll remember it a long time.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“Well, son, you cain’t go thru life chunkin’ things at all the ugly women you meet.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“Grandma Hutto’s flower garden was a bright patchwork quilt thrown down inside the pickets.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“She drew gallantry from men as the sun drew water. Her pertness enchanted them. Young men went away from her with a feeling of bravado. Old men were enslaved by her silver curls. Something about her was forever female and made all men virile.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“Ma Baxter rocked complacently. They were all pleased whenever she made a joke. Her good nature made the same difference in the house as the hearth-fire had made in the chill of the evening.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

“Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'taint easy.

--Penny Baxter to his son, Jody”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quote from The Yearling

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Popular quotes

“He wondered about the people in houses like those. They would be, for example, small clerks, shop-assistants, commercial travellers, insurance touts, tram conductors. Did they know that they were only puppets dancing when money pulled the strings? You bet they didn’t. And if they did, what would they care? They were too busy being born, being married, begetting, working, dying. It mightn’t be a bad thing, if you could manage it, to feel yourself one of them, one of the ruck of men. Our civilization is founded on greed and fear, but in the lives of common men the greed and fear are mysteriously transmuted into something nobler. The lower-middle-class people in there, behind their lace curtains, with their children and their scraps of furniture and their aspidistras — they lived by the money-code, sure enough, and yet they contrived to keep their decency. The money-code as they interpreted it was not merely cynical and hoggish. They had their standards, their inviolable points of honour. They ‘kept themselves respectable’— kept the aspidistra flying. Besides, they were alive. They were bound up in the bundle of life. They begot children, which is what the saints and the soul-savers never by any chance do.

The aspidistra is the tree of life, he thought suddenly.”
― George Orwell, quote from Keep the Aspidistra Flying

“Don’t be mad” was the first thing he said. He really was terrified, as if the most frightening reaper on the planet was no scarier than a mouse, and yet put him in a tux and it was the Apocalypse.”
― Courtney Allison Moulton, quote from Wings of the Wicked

“I will not let them harm you. I will protect you 'till my last breath.”
― Jalpa Williby, quote from Chaysing Dreams

“When we deal with probabilities under ordinary circumstances, there are the following "rules of composition": 1) if something can happen in alternative ways, we add the probabilities for each of the different ways; 2) i the event occurs as a succession of steps-or depends on a number of things happening "concomitantly" (independently)-then we multiply the probabilities of each of the steps (or things).”
― Richard Feynman, quote from QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter

“She had talked of this at length with Kadambari—Mrs. Dutt: Why should it not be possible for these freedoms to be universally available for women everywhere? And Mrs. Dutt had said that of course, this was one of the great benefits of British rule in India; that it had given women rights and protections that they’d never had before. At this, Uma had felt herself, for the first time, falling utterly out of sympathy with her new friend. She had known instinctively that this was a false argument, unfounded and illogical. How was it possible to imagine that one could grant freedom by imposing subjugation? that one could open a cage by pushing it inside a bigger cage? How could any section of a people hope to achieve freedom where the entirety of a populace was held in subjection?”
― Amitav Ghosh, quote from The Glass Palace

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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.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.