Quotes from Jean Webster

You know, Daddy, I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other people's places. It make them kind and sympathetic and understanding. It ought to be cultivated in children.

when we women get our rights, you men will have to look alive in order to keep yours.

She was worshiping under the blue sky, to the jubilant chanting of the birds.

You can't know how I dreaded appearing in school in those miserable poor box dresses. I was perfectly sure to be put down in a class next to the girl who first owned my dress, and she would whisper and giggle and point it out to the others. The bitterness of wearing your enemies cast-off clothes eats into your soul. If I wore silk stockings for the rest of my life, I don't believe I could obliterate the scar.

same. Youth has nothing to do with birthdays, only with ALIVEDNESS of spirit, so even if your hair is grey, Daddy, you can still be a boy.

I don't believe it pays to be a great author.

Whatever sky's above me, I've a heart for any fate.

You know that I've always had a very special feeling towards you; you

You remember that illuminated text over the dining-room door--"The Lord Will Provide." We've painted it out, and covered the spot with rabbits. It's all very well to teach so easy a belief to normal children, who have a proper family and roof behind them; but a person whose only refuge in distress will be a park bench must learn a more militant creed than that.

I stood alone in the winter twilight, and I took a deep breath of clear cold air, and I felt beautifully, wonderfully, electrically free

It isn't the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh—I really think that requires SPIRIT. It's

It seemed like an unachievable goal for one person to bring sunshine to one hundred little faces when what they need is a mother apiece.

That is the way Connecticut goes, in a series of Marcelle waves; and Lock Willow Farm is just on the crest of one wave. The barns used to be across the road where they obstructed the view, but a kind flash of lightning came from heaven and burnt them down.

I don't know why I am in such a reminiscent mood except that spring and the reappearance of toads always awakens the old acquisitive instinct. The only thing that keeps me from starting a collection is the fact that no rule exists against it.

They are so accustomed to the feeling that their senses are deadened to it;

Don't you think it would be interesting if you really could read the story of your life - written perfectly and truthfully by an omniscient author? ... how many could suppress their curiosity sufficiently to escape from reading it, even at the price of having to live without hope and without surprise?

That is—you are not to thank him for the money; he doesn't care to have that mentioned, but you are to write a letter telling of the progress in your studies and the details of your daily life.

One doesn't miss what one has never had; but it's awfully hard going without things after one has commenced thinking they are his/hers by natural right.

It isn't the great big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones—I've

the modern generation being flippant and superficial. He says that we are losing the old ideals of earnest endeavour and true scholarship; and particularly is this falling-off noticeable in our disrespectful attitude towards organized authority. We no longer pay a seemly deference to our superiors. I

The way people are for ever rolling their eyes to heaven and saying, 'Perhaps it's all for the best,' when they are perfectly dead sure it's not, makes me enraged. Humility or resignation or whatever you choose to call it, is simply impotent inertia. I'm for a more militant religion!

There are such lots of adventures out in the fields! It's much more entertaining to live books than to write them. Ow

see marriage as a man must, a good, sensible workaday institution; but awfully curbing to one's liberty. Somehow, after you're married forever, life has lost its feeling of adventure. There aren't any romantic possibilities waiting to surprise you around each corner.

Julia and Sallie and I all had new dresses. Do you want to hear about them? Julia's was cream satin and gold embroidery and she wore purple orchids. It was a DREAM and came from Paris, and cost a million dollars. Sallie's