Kate Douglas Wiggin

"When you have wanted something very much, and didn’t know whether you would ever get it or not, and then all at once you find you have it, you almost wish it hadn’t come so soon!"

"Lord, I do not ask that Thou shouldst give me wealth; only show me where it is, and I will attend to the rest."

"Salemina is so English! I can’t think how she manages. She is, in fact, more than English; she is British."

"Nothing .. can blot from my memory the profound, searching, and exhaustive analysis of a great nation which I learned in my small geography when I was a child, namely, " The French are a gay and polite people, fond of dancing and light wines."

"Aunt Celia is one of those persons who are born to command, and when they are thrown in contact with those who are born to be commanded all goes as merry as a marriage bell ; otherwise not."

"He had his literary weaknesses, Charles Dickens, but they were all dear, big, attractive ones, virtues grown a bit wild and rank. Somehow when you put him -- with his elemental humor, his inexhaustible vitality, his humanity, sympathy, and pity -- beside the Impeccables, he always looms large. Just for the moment, when the heart overpowers reason, he even makes the flawless ones look a little faded and colorless."