Famous Quotes & Sayings

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 59 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Dorothy Canfield Fisher.

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Famous Quotes By Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 495319

I'm as fixed in my opinion as the man who thought he was a hard-boiled egg. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1157484

This time Elizabeth Ann didn't answer, because she herself didn't know what the matter was. But I do, and I'll tell you. The matter was that never before had she known what she was doing in school. She had always thought she was there to pass from one grade to another, and she was ever so startled to get a little glimpse of the fact that she was there to learn how to read and write and cipher and generally use her mind, so she could take care of herself when she came to be grown up. Of course, she didn't really know that till she did come to be grown up, but she had her first dim notion of it in that moment, and it made her feel the way you do when you're learning to skate and somebody pulls away the chair you've been leaning on and says, "Now, go it alone! — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1864989

What is life, but one long risk? — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 276017

I declare! Sometimes it seems to me that every time a new piece of machinery comes into the door some of our wits fly out the window! — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 855314

(P)ersonality...is perhaps the very most important thing in the world. Yet we know only one or two things about it. We know that anybody's personality is made up of the sum total of all the actions and thoughts and desires of his life. And we know that though there aren't any words or any figures in any languages to set down that sum total accurately, still it is one of the first things that everybody knows about anybody else. And that really is all we know! — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1534209

Vermont is the only place in America where I ever hear thrift spoken of with respect. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 2143684

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature . — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1593466

What's the use of inventing a better system as long as there just aren't enough folks with sense to go around? — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 2193525

The matter was that never before had she known what she was doing in school. She had always thought she was there to pass from one grade to another, and she was ever so startled to get a glimpse of the fact that she was there to learn how to read and write and cipher and generally use her mind, so she could take care of herself when she came to be grown up. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1650504

One reason we haven't any national art is because we have too much magnificence. All our capacity for admiration is used up on the splendor of palace-like railway stations and hotels. Our national tympanum is so deafened by that blare of sumptuousness that we have no ears for the still, small voice of beauty. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 242039

Everyone bowed to that unwritten law of family life which ordains that, in the long run, everyone submerges his personal preference in the effort to conform to that of the member of the circle who complains most loudly and is most difficult to satisfy. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 769702

It is possible that what stirred inside her head at that moment was her brain, waking up. She was nine years old, and she was in the third-A grade at school, but that was the first time she had ever had a whole thought of her very own. At home, Aunt Frances had always known exactly what she was doing, and had helped her over the hard places before she even knew they were there; and at school her teachers had been carefully trained to think faster than the scholars. Somebody had always been explaining things to Elizabeth Ann so carefully that she had never found out a single thing for herself before. This was a very small discovery, but it was her own. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1388420

Perhaps all this modern ferment of what's known as 'social conscience' or 'civic responsibility' isn't a result of the sense of duty, but of the old, old craving for beauty. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1416226

No Vermont town ever let anybody in it starve. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1042255

There's no healthy life possible without some sensual feeling between the husband and wife, but there's nothing in the world more awful than married life when it's the only common ground. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1522771

Never since the dawn of human history, as far as I can find out, did people long settled in any region give a friendly welcome to newcomers. One of the disagreeable traits of our human nature seems to be to dislike on sight people who come later than the first settlers. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 730936

One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it's such a nice change from being young. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1388400

If we could learn how to utilize all the intelligence and patent good will children are born with, instead of ignoring much of it - why - there might be enough to go around! There might be enough to solve our alarming human problems, to put an end to poverty, to stop waging wars. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 355115

The encounter with death is the great turning-point in the lives of those who live on. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 252172

Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1959679

It was always insolent for a common man to take a chair in the presence of a lady - the word LADY, we may be sure, capitalized in her mind, and denoting not sex but rank. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1744132

It is not good for all our wishes to be filled; through sickness we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, the value of food; through exertion, the value of rest. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 317296

The teachers of small children are paid more than they were, but still far less than the importance of their work deserves, and they are still regarded by the unenlightened majority as insignificant compared to those who impart information to older children and adolescents, a class of pupils which, in the nature of things, is vastly more able to protect its own individuality from the character of the teacher. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1659351

A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnessary. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 2056962

I never heard of anybody who admired the character of sheep. Even the gentlest human personalities in contact with them are annoyed by their lack of brains, courage and initiative, by their extraordinary ability to get themselves into uncomfortable or dangerous situations and then wait in inert helplessness for someone to rescue them. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 197023

There's no such thing as luck. Nothing ever just happens to anybody ... nothing can really happen to a person till he lets it happen. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1699467

Don't let anything make you believe that there are not as many decent men in the world as women, and they're just as decent. Life isn't worth living unless you know that - and it's true. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1703863

You think religion is what's inside a little building filled with pretty lights from stained glass windows. But it's not. It's wings! Wings! — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1716490

There is no human relationship more intimate than that of nurse and patient, one in which the essentials of character are more rawly revealed. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 984660

Not a thing had happened the way she had planned, no, not a single thing! But it seemed to her she had never been so happy in her life. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1637198

History is worth reading when it tells us truly what the attitude toward life was in the past. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1761503

You can't wish a body any worse luck than to get what he wants. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1579026

Life takes hold of us with strong hands and makes us greater than we thought. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1789071

That room was full to the brim of something beautiful,...Its name was Happiness. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1993513

Help that is not positively necessary is a hindrance to a growing organism. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 2068207

If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks' vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 2226477

Professional psychologists seem to think that they are the only people who make sense out of human actions. The rest of us know that everybody tries to do just this. What else is gossip? — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 644851

I never did,' said the little girl, but in a less doubtful tone than she had ever used with that phrase so familiar to her. A dim notion was growing in her mind that the fact that she had never done a thing was no proof that she couldn't. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 112359

What better can any of us do than to reach for our own stars ... and know which they are? — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 132367

I've always noticed that nobody can be single-minded who isn't narrow-minded; and I think it likely that people who aren't so cocksure what they want to do with themselves, hesitate because they have a great deal more to deal with. A nature rich in fine and complex possibilities takes more time to dispose of itself, but when it does, the world's beauty is the gainer. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 187190

A mom isn't an individual to lean on, but a person to generate leaning needless. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 252981

How he loathed his life-long slavery to the clock, that pervasive intimate negative opposed to every spontaneous impulse. "It's the clock that is the nay-sayer to life," he thought — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 339390

The most elementary experience of life proves that the effects of compulsion last exactly as long as the physical or moral club can be applied. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 379023

The actions of a human being, even of fifteen months of age, may not be without significance to a sympathetic eye. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 416728

On New Year's Day every calendar, large and small, has the same number of dates. But we soon learn that the years are of very different lengths. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 442927

Taking somebody's sacrifices is like taking counterfeit money. You're only the poorer. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 537966

Almost anything is enough to keep alive someone who wishes nothing for himself but time to write music ... — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 589628

She was scrubbing furiously at a line of grease spots which led from the stove towards the door to the dining-room. That was where Henry had held the platter tilted as he carried the steak in yesterday. And yet if she had warned him once about that, she had a thousand times! — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1401785

Freedom is not worth fighting for if it means no more than license for everyone to get as much as he can for himself. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 670602

Libraries are the vessels in which the seed corn for the future is stored. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 718253

Oh, yes, of course I like music, too. Very much. It's so pleasant of an evening, especially when made by your friends at home. I often say I like it better than cards. Though I must say I do like a good game of bridge. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 726743

The minute your group gets so big you don't know anybody in it and they don't know you, there's hell to pay. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 780724

Gossip ... is only fiction produced by non-professionals. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 787105

Compared with more emotional types, Vermonters seem to have few passions. But those they have are great and burning. The greatest is their conviction that without freedom human life is not worth living. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 887439

The richness and endless variety of human relationships ... that's what authors, even the finest and greatest, only succeed in hinting at. It's a hopeless business, like trying to dip up the ocean with a tea-spoon. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 941768

Vermont tradition is based on the idea that group life should leave each person as free as possible to arrange his own life. This freedom is the only climate in which (we feel) a human being may create his own happiness ... Character itself lies deep and secret below the surface, unknown and unknowable by others. It is the mysterious core of life, which every man or woman has to cope with alone, to live with, to conquer and put in order, or to be defeated by. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 91560

Father sticks to it that anything that promises to pay too much can't help being risky. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1042028

There are two ways to meet life; you may refuse to care until indifference becomes a habit, a defensive armor, and you are safe - but bored. Or you can care greatly, live greatly, until life breaks you on its wheel. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes 1292376

What a fearfully distracting, perplexing and heart-searching business it is to live. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher