Quotes from Dorothy Canfield Fisher

What is life, but one long risk?

Life takes hold of us with strong hands and makes us greater than we thought.

History is worth reading when it tells us truly what the attitude toward life was in the past.

the most elementary experience of life proves that the effects of compulsion last exactly as long as the physical or moral club can be applied.

Almost anything is enough to keep alive someone who wishes nothing for himself but time to write music.

She was scrubbing furiously at a line of grease spots which led from the stove towards the door to the dining-room. That was where Henry had held the platter tilted as he carried the steak in yesterday. And yet if she had warned him once about that, she had a thousand times!

Some people think that doctors and nurses can put scrambled eggs back into the shell.

If we could only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks' vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days.

If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks' vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days.

there's no such thing as luck. Nothing ever just happens to anybody. ... nothing can really happen to a person till he lets it happen.

You can't wish a body any worse luck than to get what he wants.

don't let anything make you believe that there are not as many decent men in the world as women, and they're just as decent. Life isn't worth living unless you know that - and it's true.

The actions of a human being, even of fifteen months of age, may not be without significance to a sympathetic eye.

perhaps all this modern ferment of what's known as 'social conscience' or 'civic responsibility' isn't a result of the sense of duty, but of the old, old craving for beauty.

What a fearfully distracting, perplexing and heart-searching business it is to live.

the encounter with death is the great turning-point in the lives of those who live on.

A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnessary.

Libraries are the vessels in which the seed corn for the future is stored.