Quotes from Maud Hart Lovelace

In silence the three of them looked at the sunset and thought about God.

The most important part of religion isn't in any church. It's down in your own heart. Religion is in your thoughts, and in the way you act from day to day, in the way you treat other people. It's honesty, and unselfishness, and kindness. Especially kindness.

And yet, even as she spoke, she knew that she did not wish to come back. not to stay, not to live. She loved the little yellow cottage more than she loved any place on earth. but she was through with it except in her memories.

The wastes of snow on the hill were ghostly in the moonlight. The stars were piercingly bright.

Good things come, but they're never perfect; are they? You have to twist them into something perfect.

Say, you told me you thought Les Miserables was the greatest novel ever written. I think Vanity Fair is the greatest. Let's fight. - Joe Willard

You might as well learn right now, you two, that the poorest guide you can have in life is what people will say.

Was life always like that? she wondered. A game of hide and seek in which you only occasionally found the person you wanted to be?

The silence in the room had width, height, depth, mass and substance.

Betsy. The great war is on but I hope ours is over. Please come home. Joe.

They soon stopped being ten years old. But whatever age they were seemed to be exactly the right age for having fun.

One strain could call up the quivering expectancy of Christmas Eve, childhood, joy and sadness, the lonely wonder of a star

When there are boys you have to worry about how you look, and whether they like you, and why they like another girl better, and whether they're going to ask you to something or other. It's a strain.

Our lives can hold just so much. If they're filled with one thing, they can't be filled with another. We ought to do a lot of thinking about what we want to fill them with.

You have two numbers in your age when you are ten. It's the beginning of growing up.

I'm finished with something, but I'm not beginning anything. That's wrong. When you finish something, you ought always to begin something new.

The older I get the more mixed up life seems. When you're little, it's all so plain. It's all laid out like a game ready to play. You think you know exactly how it's going to go. But things happen...

A house with nothing old in it seems - unseasoned.

What would life be like without her writing? Writing filled her life with beauty and mystery, gave it life...and promise.

I've got to stop thinking about myself so much--about how I look, how I'm impressing someone, whether I'm popular or not. I've got to start thinking about other people, all the people I meet.