Quotes from Gertrude Atherton

A man is more than one being in his life. If the last persists, why not the first? If there be a hereafter for his age, why not for his youth?

No matter how hard a man may labor, some woman is always in the background of his mind. She is the one reward of virtue.

In times of panic man seems to exchange his soul for a tail.

the best of all good friends is pride.

Our impulses are our birthright. To alter personality would be unjust, almost criminal, for the impulses that make a fool or worse of us in certain circumstances may be necessary for our happiness.

It is seldom that the imagination is disappointed in the 'ancestral piles' of England.

power, after it has ceased from troubling, is the dominant passion in human nature.

when I am alone in the forest I always say my prayers; and that occasional solitary communion with God is surely the only true religion for intelligent beings.

there is only one thing we do know and that is that we do not know anything.

Writing was my real life and I was more at home with the people of my imagination than with the best I met in the objective world.

New York has always prided itself on its bad manners. That is the real source of our strength.

the only revenge worth having is success.

The final result of too much routine is death in life.

... the irony of life is not that you cannot forget but that you can.

It is a pretty trick of authors to make nature ever in sympathy with man, but as a matter of fact she seldom is.

The very commonplaces of life are components of its eternal mystery.

nothing in life is more corroding than habit.

genius must ever be imperfect. Life is not long enough nor slow enough for both brain and character to grow side by side to superhuman proportions.

fiction is not only the historian of life but its apologist.

... books are too heterogeneous an interest to furnish a vital one in life, a reason for being alive.

Never trust a woman who will not lie about her age after thirty. She is unwomanly and unhuman and there is no knowing what crimes she will commit.

Oh, what is young love! The urge of the race. A blaze that ends in babies or ashes.

Fame compensates for a column of wants.

To put a tempting face aside when duty demands every faculty is a lesson which takes most men longest to learn.