Quotes from Bess Streeter Aldrich

And so a greater share of the night, Laura shed tears into her soft white pillow. Some of them were for old Oscar Lutz.... Some of them were for the general sad fact that hours fly and flowers die. But most of them were shed because of her own sudden and definite realization that even though there come new days and new ways,--love stays.

Humans are queer. A man, living and well, is ignored or criticized. Dying or dead, he is noticed and praised. Death sheds a temporary glamour over the poorest soul. It is as though in dying, he has accomplished something which life never gave him.

Laura knew the price of motherhood to be pain and responsibility; the reward, love and pride.

The last name had been entered by Samuel Peters' agile pen with much shading of downward strokes and many extra corkscrew appendages...

Hair, to Tillie, meant nothing by way of being a woman's crowning glory. It was merely, as the dictionary so ably states, small horny, fibrous tubes with bulbous roots, growing out of the skins of mammals; and it was meant to be combed down as flat as possible and held in place with countless wire hairpins.

Standing there in the soddie door, she seemed two personalities. One argued bitterly that it was impossible for love to keep going when there was no hope for the future, suggested that there was no use trying to keep it going. The other said sternly that marriage was not the fulfillment of a passion,—marriage was the fulfillment of love. And love was sometimes pleasure and sometimes duty.

For can you think how it would be, to never, never hear a meadow lark sing again...?

The wheels where enormous wooden affairs, the back ones rounding up over the windows of the coach.

Far into the evening they sat around the old coal burner talking and laughing, with tears not far behind the laughter - the state legislator and the banker, the artist, the singer, and the college teacher. And in their midst, rocking and smiling, sat the little old lady who had brought them up with a song on her lips and a lantern in her hand.

Indebtedness is the poor man's curse. Just so, it's a county's curse . . . or a state's . . . or a nation's.

Sometimes I think I was the official killer of bad bills. One I recollect at this minute was about exemptin' debtors from their just debts. The more I listened to 'em argue about lettin' people get out from under their legitimate obligations, the madder I got. If the day ever comes when you can legislate people out of their honest debts . . . well, I never want to live to see it. The country will be in a bad way, that's all I got to say for it.

The country's already got a two billion dollar debt. Say that over and see if you can sense it. Not millions . . . two billions. I doubt if the country'll ever take on a load like that again once it's settled.

A piece of rusty pump and a pile of stones,--all that was left of the place he and Marthy had called home. Home. What a big word that was. Lots of attempts made lately to belittle it. Plenty of fun poked at it. Young folks laughed about it,--called it a place to park. Everybody wanted to get some place else, seemed like. They'd find out. They'd understand some day. When they got old, they'd know. They'd want to go home. sometimes in their lives everybody wanted to go home.

It was queer how it all hurt you--how the odor of the night, the silver sheen of the moon, the moist feeling of the dew, the whispering of the night breeze, how somewhere down in your throat it hurt you.

She slipped silently out of the kitchen, climbed the wide, curving stairway, and went into her room. Then she turned the lock and sat down in a low rocking-chair by the window. She was resentfully, flamingly angry, as good, high-minded people sometimes become angry. She was deeply, quiveringly hurt, as sensible, sunshiny people, who do not go about looking for slights, are sometimes hurt.

Many hands were willing to perform the last tender ministrations. It is characteristic of the small town and rural districts. Sympathy there takes concrete form. It becomes cakes and cinnamon rolls and sitting up nights, husking corn and washing dishes and closing the eyes of the neighboring dead.

You can't describe love, Kathie, and you can't define it. Only it goes with you all your life. I think that love is more like a light that you carry. At first childish happiness keeps it lighted and after that romance. Then motherhood lights it and then duty...and maybe after that sorrow. You wouldn't think that sorrow could be a light would you, dearie? But it can. And then after that, service lights it. Yes...I think that is what love is to a woman...a lantern in her hand.

Life is too terrible. How can one stand it? It holds such heartbreaking things." "And that," said Allen simply " is one reason why two people who care for each other should meet it together

Part of Mother went with them. It is an acrobatic feat that only mothers can understand, this ability to be with every child.

It took all their common sense and philosophy to face life these days. The two are synonymous.

There was sturdy pioneer blood in Eleanor, the strain that meets crises clear-eyed and bravely.

We're all inclined to think we have a monopoly on each new sensation that comes to us, that it's our own particular little grievance. But every feeling and every thought you may have now has probably been felt and thought by mothers from the time the world began.

Contentment lay in the place they had made for each other and for the children.

The other said sternly that marriage was not the fulfillment of a passion,—marriage was the fulfillment of love. And love was sometimes pleasure and sometimes duty.