Quotes from Mary Ellen Chase

It is quite possible to leave your home for a walk in the early morning air and return a different person - beguiled, enchanted.

To lovers of the long and intricate history of language the disuse and final death of certain words is a matter of regret. Yet every age bears witness to the inevitableness of such loss.

There is no substitute for books in the life of a child.

Of all the excellent teachers of college English whom I have known I have never discovered one who knew precisely what he was doing. Therein have lain their power and their charm.

Suffering without understanding in this life is a heap worse than suffering when you have at least the grain of an idea what it's all for.

Even one's yesterdays could not continue to stir and move in a man's mind unless there were a future for those yesterdays to make.

Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind.

Manual labor to my father was not only good and decent for its own sake but as he was given to saying it straightened out one's thoughts.

Christmas is not a date. It is a state of mind.

Whatever laudable qualities the English may possess in their selection, preparation, and consumption of food, elegance, originality, diversity, and imagination are not among them.

Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind.

There is no substitute for books in the life of a child.