Sarah Orne Jewett

So we die before our own eyes; so we see some chapters of our lives come to their natural end.

The road was new to me, as roads always are, going back.

'Tain't worthwhile to wear a day all out before it comes.

In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness.

Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of.

Tact is after all a kind of mind-reading.

We were standing where there was a fine view of the harbor and its long stretches of shore all covered by the great army of the pointed firs, darkly cloaked and standing as if they waited to embark. As we looked far seaward among the outer …

"Step in some afternoon," he said, as affectionately as if I were a fellow-shipmaster wrecked on the lee shore of age like himself.

The old poets little knew what comfort they could be to a man.

Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading.

The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper — whether little or great, it belongs to Literature.

Your patience may have long to wait, Whether in little things or great, But all good luck, you soon will learn, Must come to those who nobly earn. Who hunts the hay-field over Will find the four-leaved clover.

A harbor, even if it is a little harbor, is a good thing, since adventurers come into it as well as go out, and the life in it grows strong, because it takes something from the world, and has something to give in return.

The warm sun kissed the earth To consecrate thy birth, And from his close embrace Thy radiant face Sprang into sight, A blossoming delight.

Look bravely up into the sky, And be content with knowing That God wished for a buttercup Just here, where you are growing.

I'd rather be my honest self Than any made-up daisy.