Quotes from Rachel Field

Too much good fortune can make you smug and unaware. Happiness should be like an oasis, the greener for the desert that surrounds it.

Affections cannot be stolen, madam. They are given freely or not at all.

Isn't it strange some people make You feel so tired inside, Your thoughts begin to shrivel up Like leaves all brown and dried! But when you're with some other ones, It's stranger still to find Your thoughts as thick as fireflies All shiny in your mind!

The more one suffered and lived, the more one had known of joy and grief, the deeper the response must be if an artist were great enough to summon it.

I heard it once again, coming to me across miles of air from a far away concert hall. I knew when I heard the drums begin their familiar beat of hammers on the wooden hulls what I had known so surely that night of his concert and out there alone with him in the sort, that nothing which has ever stirred the heard can be lost to us.

I heard it once again, coming to me across miles of air from a far away concert hall. I knew when I heard the drums begin their familiar beat of hammers on the wooden hulls what I had known so surely that night of his concert and out there alone with him in the storm, that nothing which has ever stirred the heard can be lost to us.

But I was so sure of myself. I believed I could manage my own life. Mud might spatter and spoil other skirts, but not mine. Somehow I believed no harm could come to me because I meant no harm to others. I was defiant and proud because I felt too sure of myself.' "'You are not the first to make that mistake,' he answered gravely. 'We all believe our lives are our own till we find we cannot separate them from other lives.'" -p. 300

Reputation is a prize you've won for yourself with self-denial and hard work. If you throw it away, what have you left to fall back on? How will you contrive to live without it?" -p. 198

It only takes a drop of poison to turn what is sound to something rotten and corrupt." -p. 201

The daily venom of the Duchesse's jealousy had corroded his self-control. It was as if an oak tree that had defied storms and woodsmen had fallen at last under the incessant hammerings of a woodpecker." -p. 299

It's been so happy for us all to have you here, and I've tried not to think of - of the accounting that you and I, too, must give to the Duchesse. I cannot help feeling that you - that we shall pay dearly because you came with us and left her behind." "I always pay." He spoke evenly, but his brows drew together in a frown. "Sometimes I pay most for what I never had. I've been happy these few days, and at least that's something on my side of the ledger.

They shan't humiliate me to please themselves.

I've seen public opinion shift like the wind and put out the very fire it lighted.

no matter how hard and faithfully we may try we can never compensate another for some lack in his or her life.

There was no reality to pain when it left one, thought while it held one fast all other realities failed.

One of the pleasantest things about book writing is that sometimes it brings one in touch with old friends.

When I was young they used to say people only threw stones at the tree that was loaded with fruit.

The sight of a cage is only frightening to the bird that has once been caught.

Too much good fortune can make you smug and unaware. Happiness should be like an oasis, the greener for the desert that surrounds it.

I used to think I had ambition... but now I'm not so sure. It may have been only discontent. They're easily confused.