Quotes from Ellen Glasgow

Charlotte possessed, in reality, a mind of more than ordinary dimensions. It is true that feminine dissimulation, combined with the flattening influence of marriage, had subdued its activities; yet her rational part continued to exercise, in discreet silence, both passive intelligence and a critical faculty.

Glancing round the spacious library, where the handsome sets of books were never taken out of the formidable modern yet still Jacobean bookcases, he sighed regretfully because possessions, like the spirit of the possessor, are not incorruptible.

the human is sometimes as inscrutable, as inexplicable, as the supernatural.

man is not a rational animal. He may have invented many social philosophies, but he remains incurably biological.

she had never thought of the young as needing religion, because they always had so much else. For the elderly, especially for the elderly with husbands who were even more elderly but refused to admit it, she considered faith indispensable.

Lord! Lord! thar's such a sight of meanness in this here world that it makes a body b'lieve in Providence whether or no.

No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not someday be antiquated.

They will never again build like this, he thought. Dignity is an anachronism.

Given two tempers and the time, the ordinary marriage produces anarchy.

the great novels have marched with the years. They are the contemporaries of time.

Nobody, not even the old, not even the despairing, wished to come to an end in time or in eternity.

The surest way of winning love is to look as if you didn't need it.

I waited and worked, and watched the inferior exalted for nearly thirty years; and when recognition came at last, it was too late to alter events, or to make a difference in living.

The truth is I've got the land on my back, an' it's drivin' me. Land is a hard driver.

What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.

I liked human beings, but I did not love human nature.

... the life of the mind is reality, and love without romantic illumination is a spiritless matter.

The government's like a mule, it's slow and it's sure; it's slow to turn, and it's sure to turn the way you don't want it.

The suitable is the last thing we ever want.

It is lovely, when I forget all birthdays, including my own, to find that somebody remembers me.

No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not someday be antiquated.

Doesn't all experience crumble in the end to mere literary material?

No life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it.

The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions.