Quotes from D.E. Stevenson

Few of us have the necessary unselfishness to hear with gladness the talents of others extolled or to listen with patience to the successes of those whom we despise—Vivian

To have all my dear ones together under one roof - that is all I ask of life.

In a new friend we start life anew, for we create a new edition of ourselves and so become,for the time being, a new creature.

Friends that you have known for a long time and love very dearly never seem to grow old.

What fools the public were! They were exactly like sheep…thought Mr. Abbott sleepily…following each other's lead, neglecting one book and buying another just because other people were buying it, although, for the life of you, you couldn't see what the one lacked and the other possessed.

Some people's elegance was only skin-deep, scrape off a little bit of the veneer and you got the real wood—common

Friends that you have known for a long time and love very dearly never seem to grow old.

Books are people,'' smiled Miss Marks. ''In every book worth reading, the author is there to meet you, to establish contact with you. He takes you into his confidence and reveals his thoughts to you.

It was just the old house creaking in the wind, and talking to itself about all it had seen, and the big cheerful families which it had sheltered and sent forth into the world.

The best way to plant happiness is to do at least one thing every day to make one person happier, and to do it for God. That shouldn't be difficult. we can all do that.

It is curious but true that those who make a habit of saying unkind things are often the most easily hurt and offended when their victims retaliate.

Some people travel all over the world and see nothing. They go about clad in a thick fog of their own making through which no impressions can penetrate.

Poverty is easy to bear if it is only temporary, easier still if it is an entirely voluntary burden.

Few of us have the necessary unselfishness to hear with gladness the talents of others extolled or to listen with patience to the successes of those whom we despise.

It is curious, isn't it, that things you know well never look dirty and dilapidated—other people's old furniture looks shabby and moth-eaten. "I would never have that horrible old couch in my room," you say. But your own old couch is every bit as bad and you are not disgusted with its appearance; it is your friend, you see, and you remember it when it was new and smart. Friends that you have known for a long time and love very dearly never seem to grow old.

Do you ever have days like that when nothing can go wrong? And then there are the days when can go right, Paula continued. When your hair won't lie down properly, and your stockings develop ladders at the worst possible moment, or your suspender breaks, and buttons fly off your gloves. When you say the wrong things to the wrong people, and spill coffee on your favorite frock, and break your reading glasses, and your cook asks for a raise - you know the kind of thing I mean, said Paula.

There are very few people in the world with courage enough to admit that they do not care for music (dogs and children come into the same category) and so brand themselves forever as Philistines in the eyes of their friends.

In a new friend we start life anew, for we create a new edition of ourselves and so become, for the time being, a new creature.

People are apt to take you at your own valuation . . . I mean if you lie down on the floor and look like a doormat people can't be blamed for wiping their boots on you.

By this time Miss Lamington knew a good deal about her "boss". She knew that he was thirty-six (which was "quite old" in her estimation); he lived with his mother at Beckenham and travelled to the office every day

I can take a book in my hands and voyage across the world. China, Burma, Jamaica—the very sound of the words is an enchantment bringing me sights and sounds, and odors that my senses have never savored.

You still miss her?" "Yes, I still miss her frightfully. It's two years since she died, but I haven't got used to doing without her. I still keep on wanting to tell her things." "I know the feeling," said Louise. "I miss Mummy like that. It comes and goes. Sometimes I forget about it—and then the tide rises and I'm almost drowned. It happens quite suddenly—I never know when it's going to happen.

Nell wagged her feathery tail. It was good when the goddess descended from the clouds and spoke to you; it gave you a cozy safe feeling in your inside.

The strangest thing in all man's travelling is that he should carry about with him incongruous memories. There is no foreign land; it is the traveller only who is foreign, and now and then, by a flash of recollection, lights up the contrasts of the earth.