Quotes from Margaret Deland

I have heard that a man might be his own lawyer, but you can't be your own judge.

men love their wives not because of their virtues, but in spite of them.

... if a man really and truly believed that black was white, you might advise him to see an oculist, but you mustn't call him a liar.

What I object to in Mother is that she wants me to think her thoughts. Apart from the question of hypocrisy, I prefer my own.

Every new truth begins in a shocking heresy.

A sneer is like a flame it may occasionally be curative because it cauterizes but it leaves a bitter scar.

moral vanity is the snare of good people.

... in a wicked way, it is an incentive to good living to observe the spice of enjoyment there is to a godly soul in a very little sin.

There's one thing that always interests me about you good people, not your certainty that the rest of us are swine, - no doubt we are, - but your certainty that your opinions are pearls.

Home is the best place to be sick in.

A pint can't hold a quart - if it holds a pint it is doing all that can be expected of it.

It is useless to deny that, unless one has a genius for imparting knowledge, teaching is a drudgery.

we middle-aged folk have the education of life, truly; we know the multiplication table of anxieties and sorrows, the subtraction table of loss, the division table of responsibility.

Age, with shamefaced relief, has learned the solvent quality of Time. It is this quality which makes possible the contemplation of certain embarrassing heavenly reunions.

Some time in our lives every man and woman of us, putting out our hands toward the stars, touch on either side our prison walls the immutable limitations of temperament

Truth is like heat or light; its vibrations are endless, and are endlessly felt.

faith, it seems to me, is not the holding of certain dogmas; it is simply openness and readiness of heart to believe any truth which God may show.

... Love never forgets; or if it does, it is an imperfect love, like the beautiful love of a dog, faithful and unreasoning.

Anger as well as love casts out fear.

There is a bond, it appears, between mother and child which endures as long as they do. It is independent of love; reason cannot weaken it; hate cannot destroy it.

Absurdity is the one thing love can't stand; it can overlook anything else, -- coldness, or weakness, or viciousness, -- but just be ridiculous and that's the end of it!

In connection with death, or birth, or love, modesty is only a rather puerile self-consciousness.

Grief is the price Love pays for being in the same world with Death.

You can't have genius without patience.