Gene Stratton-Porter Quotes & Sayings

Had I life to live over, I see now where I could do more; but neighbour, believe me, my highest aspiration is to be a clean, thrifty housekeeper, a bountiful cook, a faithful wife, a sympathetic mother. That is life work for any woman, and to be a good woman is the greatest thing on earth. Never mind about the ladies; if you can honestly say of me, she is a good woman, you have paid me the highest possible tribute ... To be a good wife and mother is the end toward which I aspire. To hold the respect and love of my husband is the greatest object of my life. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Comstock, but I left a wrong impression with you. I don't want — Gene Stratton-Porter

I do not know why it is the fate of the world always to want something different from what life gives them. — Gene Stratton-Porter

You see it's like this: the Book tells us most distinctly that 'God is love.' Now it was love that sent Laddie to bind himself for a long, tedious job, to give Leon his horse, wasn't it? — Gene Stratton-Porter

I exist in a twenty-mile radius, but through him, I know all lands, principalities and kingdoms, peoples and customs. I need never be ashamed to go, or afraid to speak, anywhere. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Don't!" cried Jamie. "Don't be bitter, Margaret. We don't know why, we never can know why things happen in this world exactly as they do; but this we know: We know that God is in His Heaven, that He is merciful to the extent of ordaining mercy; we know that if we disobey and take our own way and run contrary to His commandments, we are bitterly punished. And it is the most pitiful of laws that no man or woman can take their punishment alone in this world. It is the law that none of us can suffer without making someone else suffer, but in some way it must be that everything works out for the best, even if we can't possibly see how that could be when things are happening that hurt us so. — Gene Stratton-Porter

I was born a sweater, I shall just go on sweating until I die; I refuse to begin perspiring at my time of life." "You — Gene Stratton-Porter

Father said man was born a praying animal, and no matter how wicked he was, if he had an accident, or saw he had just got to die, he cried aloud to the Lord for help and mercy before he knew what he was doing. — Gene Stratton-Porter

She knew, even lacking as she was in feminine sophistication, that there were two open roads to the heart of a woman. One is a wedding and the other is a baby. The lure of either is irresistible. As — Gene Stratton-Porter

Reason may be depended upon to keep its balance when God gives the surcease of tears in time of trouble. — Gene Stratton-Porter

There was nothing in the whole world so dreadful as the power of riches wrongly used. — Gene Stratton-Porter

The friend in need is the one who is the friend in deed; ... if people were not friends in need, there was every likelihood that they never would be friends again in any conditions that might obtain. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Of two evils, I always choose the lesser. — Gene Stratton-Porter

In the economy of nature nothing is ever lost. I cannot belive that the soul of man shall prove the one exception — Gene Stratton-Porter

From an outside viewpoint it seems as if I had almost all a man could ask in reason. But when was a strong man in the grip of love ever reasonable? I think the Almighty took a pretty grave responsibility when He made men as He did. If I had been He, and understood the forces I was handling, I would have been too big a coward to do it. — Gene Stratton-Porter

The swamp had sent back the soul of her loved dead and put it into the body of the daughter she resented, and it was almost more than she could endure and live. — Gene Stratton-Porter

The Angel's eyes widened curiously and her lips parted. a deep colour swept into her cheeks. She had intended to arouse him. She had more than succeeded. She was too young to know that in the effort to rouse a man, women frequently kindle fires that they neither can quench or control. — Gene Stratton-Porter

I loved words that filled your mouth, and sounded as if you were used to books. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Twould be a rare joke on the Boss," he said, "to be stalin' from him the very thing he's trusted me to guard, and be getting me wages all winter throwed in free. And you're making the pay awful high. Me to be getting five hundred for such a simple little thing as that. You're trating me most royal indade! It's away beyond all I'd be expecting. Sivinteen cints would be a big price for that job. It must be looked into thorough. Just you wait here until I do a minute's turn in the swamp, and then I'll be eschorting you out of the clearing and giving you the answer. — Gene Stratton-Porter

When they reached her she stood on the path holding a pair of moths. Her eyes were wide with excitement , her cheeks pink, her red lips parted, and on the hand she held out to them clung a pair of delicate blue-green moths, with white bodies, and touches of lavender and straw colour. All about her lay flower-brocaded grasses, behind a deep green background of the forest, while the sun slowly sifted gold from heaven to burnish her hair. Mrs. Comstock heard a sharp breath behind her.
Oh, what a picture!" Exulted Ammon over sher shoulder. "She is absolutely and altogether lovely! Id give a small fortune for that faithfully set on canvas! — Gene Stratton-Porter

As a nation, our people are pampering themselves and living for their own pleasures. They won't take the trouble or endure the pain required to bear and to rear children; and the day is rolling toward us, with every turn of the planet one day closer, when we are going to be outnumbered by a combination of peoples who can take our own tricks and beat us with them. We must pass along the good word that the one thing America needs above every other thing on earth is HOMES AND HEARTS BIG ENOUGH FOR CHILDREN, as were the homes of our grandfathers, when no joy in life equaled the joy of a new child in the family, and if you didn't have a dozen you weren't doing your manifest duty. — Gene Stratton-Porter

He taught me to read and write. I learned my lessons with my elder children. He has always kept school in our house, every night of his life. Our children supposed it was for them; I knew it was quite as much for me. While I sat at knitting or sewing, I spelled over the words he gave out. I know nothing of my ancestors, save that they came from the lowlands of Holland, down where there were cities, schools, and business. They were well educated, but they would not take the trouble to teach their children. As I have spoken to you, my husband taught me. All I know I learn from — Gene Stratton-Porter

Ain't it queer that she'd take to stones, bugs, and butterflies, and save them. Now they are going to bring her the very thing she wants the worst. Lord, but this is a funny world when you get to studying! Looks like things didn't all come by accident. Looks as if there was a plan back of it, and somebody driving that knows the road, and how to handle the lines. Anyhow, Elnora's in the wagon, and when I get out in the night and the dark closes around me, and I see the stars, I don't feel so cheap. — Gene Stratton-Porter

I write as the birds sing, because I must, and usually from the same source of inspiration. — Gene Stratton-Porter

The Cardinal ... It was as if a pulsing heart of flame passed by when he came winging through the orchard. — Gene Stratton-Porter

You haven't said yet weather I may help you while I am here"
Elnora hesitated.
You better say 'yes,'" he persisted.
It would be a real kindness. It would keep me out doors all day and give an incentive to work. I'm good at it. I'll show you if I am not in a week or so. I can 'sugar' manipulate lights, and mirrors, and all the expert methods. I'll wager moths are think int the old swamp over there"
They are," said Elnora. "Most I have I took there. A few nights ago my mother caught a good many, but we don't dare go alone"
All the more reason why you need me. Where do you live? I can't get an answer from you, I'll just go tell your mother who I am and ask her if I may help you. I warn you young lady, I have a very effective way with mothers. They almost never turn me down."
Then it's probable you will have a new experience when you meet mine," said Elnora. "She never was known to do what anyone expected she surely would. — Gene Stratton-Porter

To my way of thinking and working, the greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to leave him with a higher ideal of life than he had when he began. If in one small degree it shows him where he can be ... gentler, saner, cleaner, kindlier ... it is a wonder-working book. If it opens his eyes to one beauty in nature he never saw for himself and leads him one step toward the God of the Universe, it is a beneficial book ... — Gene Stratton-Porter

Billy moved restlessly. "Seems like-seems like- towards night as if a body got kind o' lonesome for a woman person-like her." Billy indicated Margaret and then closed his eyes so tight his small face wrinkled. — Gene Stratton-Porter

One feature about Los Angeles that I particularly love is the chance for association with all kinds of creative artists, a thing I never before have had. I certainly do love a number of the writers, the painters, the musicians, and the sculptors that I meet here ... Next to the sunshine, I appreciate it the most of anything in California. — Gene Stratton-Porter

You cannot write on the heart of another what you do not feel yourself. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Not!' This is a house of worship. The Lord may be drawing her in His own way. It is for us to help Him by being kind and making her welcome. — Gene Stratton-Porter

When any man accumulates more than he can earn with his own hands, he begins to enrich himself at the expense of the youth, the sweat, the blood, the joy of his fellow men. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Mother Duncan, do kisses wash off?............"Lord, na! Freckles," she cried. "At least, the anes ye get from people ye love dinna. They dinna stay on the outside. They strike in until they find the centre of your heart and make their stopping-place there, and naething can take them from ye-I doubt if even death-Na, lad, ye can be reet sure kisses dinna wash off! — Gene Stratton-Porter

You needn't be thinking," he said to the goldfinch, "that because I'm coming down this line alone day after day, it's always to be so. Some of these times you'll be swinging on this wire, and you'll see me coming, and you'll swing, skip, and flirt yourself around, and chip up right spunky: 'SEE ME?' I'll be saying 'See you? Oh, Lord! See her!' You'll look, and there she'll stand. The sunshine won't look gold any more, or the roses pink, or the sky blue, because she'll be the pinkest, bluest, goldest thing of all. You'll be yelling yourself hoarse with the jealousy of her. The sawbird will stretch his neck out of joint, and she'll turn the heads of all the flowers. Wherever she goes, I can go back afterward and see the things she's seen, walk the path she's walked, hear the grasses whispering over all she's said; and if there's a place too swampy for her bits of feet; Holy Mother! Maybe--maybe she'd be putting the beautiful arms of her around me neck and letting me carry her over! — Gene Stratton-Porter

A lady must be born of unsullied blood for at least three generations, on each side of her house. Think for a minute about where you are going to fulfil that condition. Then she must be gentle by nature, and rearing. She must know all there is to learn from books, have wide experience to cover all emergencies, she must be steeped in social graces, and diplomatic by nature. She must rise unruffled to any emergency, never wound, never offend, always help and heal, she must be perfect in deportment, virtue, wifehood and motherhood. She must be graceful, pleasing and beautiful. She must have much leisure to perfect herself in learning, graces and arts - — Gene Stratton-Porter

What you are lies with you. If you are lazy, and accept your lot, you may live in it. If you are willing to work, you can write your name anywhere you choose, among the only ones who live beyond the grave in this world, the people who write books that help, make exquisite music, carve statues, paint pictures, and work for others. Never mind the calico dress, and the coarse shoes. Work at you books, and before long you will hear yesterday's tormentors boasting that they were once classmates of yours. — Gene Stratton-Porter

My publishers will make any kind of a beautiful book I design and send in to them, but ... For poetry they have less use than a rooster would have for skates. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Nature always levies her tribute. — Gene Stratton-Porter

We are all more interested in ourselves than in any one else in this world, until love comes; then we soon learn to a love man more than life, and when a child comes we learn another love, so clear, so high, so purifying, that we become of no moment at all, and live only for those we love." "You — Gene Stratton-Porter

Maybe after all it's a good thing to tell people about their meanness and give them a stirring up once in a while. — Gene Stratton-Porter

He swore by all that he ever had loved and reverenced that he would try, try with all his might in the short time that might remain to him ... he would forget himself, he would put his own pain and chagrin and disappointment, his own feeling of defeat and uselessness, his own craving for love and intellectual companionship in the background, and he would see if the more than six feet of bone and muscle that contained his being could do any small service that might come his way for God and his fellow man before he went. Maybe if he could accomplish some little thing, something that would ease the ache of even one heart that ached as his was aching at that minute, just maybe that knowledge would be the secret that he might carry in his breast that would set the stamp of an indelible smile on his face, so that even a child could discern the majesty of the impulse and he would not be ashamed when the end came. — Gene Stratton-Porter

There was an exquisitely beautiful conception in my brain when I did this piece of work all alone from midnight until morning after the experience of a wonderful day. But I was not able to make the consummation anywhere nearly as beautiful as the inspiration. That, I suppose, is the cry of every heart struggling for self-expression. — Gene Stratton-Porter

I know men and women. An honourable man is an honourable man, and a liar is a liar; both are born and not made. One cannot change to the other any more than that same old leopard can change its spots.
After a man tells a woman the first untruth of that sort, the others come piling thick, fast, and mountain high. — Gene Stratton-Porter

We never know the timber of a man's soul until something cuts into him deeply and brings the grain out strong. You've the making of a mighty fine piece of furniture ... — Gene Stratton-Porter

As long as there had been eleven babies, they should have been so accustomed to children that they needn't all of them have objected to me, all except Laddie, of course. That was the reason I loved him so and tried to do every single thing he wanted me to, just the way he liked it done. That was why I was facing the only spot on our land where I was the slightest afraid; because he asked me to. If he had told me to dance a jig on the ridgepole of our barn, I would have tried it. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Down the footpath the two went through the perfect morning, the love of God and all nature in their hearts. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Love her?" I cried. "Why he just loves her to death! He turns so white, and he suffers so, when her pain is the worst. Love her? And she him? Why, don't you remember the other day when he tipped her head against him and kissed her throat as he left the table; that he asked her if she 'loved him yet,' and she said right before all of us, 'Why Paul, I love you, until I scarcely can keep my fingers off you! — Gene Stratton-Porter

Jamie reflected that if he purposely went down to the crags of the Pacific and threw himself to the sharks, when he came before God and his father and mother, he could carry no smiling secret on his face. He would not have kept the faith. He would have broken the laws of God and man. He would have allowed frail woman to surpass him in courage, in endurance. He shut his eyes to close out even the imagined look on his mother's face. So right there Jamie crossed off the Pacific from his scheme of release. — Gene Stratton-Porter

What was money that it should make such dreadful things of men and women? — Gene Stratton-Porter

How a big majority of book critics and authors have come to believe and to teach that no book is true to life unless it is true to the worst in life, God knows ... — Gene Stratton-Porter

I am so unfortunate in my temper. I could manage slaves better than women. This time I'll be calm, and reason things out with her, or I'll blow out my brains. — Gene Stratton-Porter

The wages of sin are the hardest debts on earth to pay, and they are always collected at inconvenient times and unexpected places. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Yes. He is Aunt Margaret's doctor, and he would be ours, only we are never ill."
Well you look it!" said the man, appraising Elnora at a glance.
Strangers always mention it," sighed Elnora. "I wonder how it would feel to be a pale languid lady and ride in a carriage."
Ask me!" laughed the man. "It feels like the- dickens! — Gene Stratton-Porter

You should be more than an imitator. You must be a creator!" Donald — Gene Stratton-Porter

Mother was little but she was mighty. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Who do you think made this world an' the things 'at's in it? Maybe it's your notion 'at somebody about your size whittled it from a block o' wood, scattered a little sand for earth, stuck a few seeds for trees, an' started the oceans with a waterin' pot! I don't know what paved streets an' stall feedin' do for a man, but any one 'at's lived sixty year on the ground knows 'at this whole old earth is jest teemin' with work 'at's too big for anything but a God, an' a mighty BIG God at that! — Gene Stratton-Porter

It must have been perfectly dreadful to see a woman every day for five years, and not give her a pie, when you felt sure yours were better than she could make. — Gene Stratton-Porter

For every bad man and woman I have ever known, I have met ... an overwhelming number of thoroughly clean and decent people who still believe in God and cherish high ideals, and it is upon the lives of these people that I base what I write. To contend that this does not produce a picture true to life is idiocy. It does. It produces a picture true to ideal life; to the best that good men and good women can do at level best.
I care very little for the ... critics who proclaim that there is no such thing as a moral man, and that my pictures of life are sentimental and idealized. They are! And I glory in them! They are straight, living pictures from the lives of men and women of morals, honor, and loving kindness ...
Such a big majority of book critics and authors have begun to teach, whether they really believe it or not, that no book is true to life unless it is true to the worst in life. — Gene Stratton-Porter

They knew so well how it felt, that they kept one bed in the boys' room, and any man who came at dusk got his supper, to sleep there, and his breakfast, and there never was anything to pay. The girls always scolded dreadfully about the extra washing, but mother said she slept on sheets when she came out, and some one washed them. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Every intoxicating delight of early spring was in the air. The breeze that fanned her cheek was laden with subtle perfume and the crisp, fresh odor of unfolding leaves. — Gene Stratton-Porter

He did not want to fail, when the Bee Master had trusted him with the home and the possessions and the occupation that were all he had of his very own, and he did not know that as the storm drew nearer, as the clouds grew blacker, as the heat waves resolved themselves into definite flashes of lightning, as the night closed down black as velvet around him, he did not realize that his moral and mental forces were rising with the tide of the storm, that all the remnants of manhood left in his shaken body were gathering together for some sort of culmination, just as presently the storm would reach its height and then subside. — Gene Stratton-Porter

The seasons run with swift feet. — Gene Stratton-Porter

They all reproduce themselves, they all make something intended for music, they all express a feeling in their hearts by the exercise we call dance, they all believe in the after life of the soul. This belief is as much a PART of any man, ever born in any location, as his hands and his feet. — Gene Stratton-Porter

There never was a moment in my life, when I felt so in the Presence, as I do now. I feel as if the Almighty were so real, and so near, that I could reach out and touch Him, as I could this wonderful work of His, if I dared. I feel like saying to Him: 'To the extent of my brain power I realize Your presence, and all it is in me to comprehend of Your power. Help me to learn, even this late, the lessons of Your wonderful creations. Help me to unshackle and expand my soul to the fullest realization of Your wonders. Almighty God, make me bigger, make me broader! — Gene Stratton-Porter

No one in the whole world knows all a man's bignesses and all his littlenesses as his wife does. — Gene Stratton-Porter

She held the moth to the light. It was nearer brown than yellow,and she remembered having seen some like it in the boxes that afternoon.It was not the one needed to complete the collection,but Elnora might want it,so Mrs. Comstock held on. Then the Almighty was kind,or nature was sufficient,as you look at it,for following the law of its being when disturbed,the moth again threw the spray by which some suppose it attracts its kind,and liberally sprinkled Mrs. Comstock's dress front and arms. From that instant,she became the best moth bait ever invented. Every Polyphemus in range hastened to her,and other fluttering creatures of night followed. The influx came her way. She snatched wildly here and there until she had one in each hand and no place to put them. She could see more coming,and her aching heart,swollen with the strain of long excitement,hurt pitifully.She prayed in broken exclamations that did not always sound reverent,but never was a human soul more intense earnest. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Ance a man-child has beaten his way to life under the heart of a woman, she is mither to all men, for the hearts of mithers are everywhere the same. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Secrets with Laddie were the greatest joy in life. He was so big and so handsome. He was so much nicer than any one else in our family, or among our friends, that to share his secrets, run his errands, and love him blindly was the greatest happiness. Sometimes I disobeyed father and mother; I minded Laddie like his right hand — Gene Stratton-Porter

If the homemakers of this country don't get the idea into their heads pretty soon that they are not going to be able to hold their own with the rest of the world, with no children, or one child in the family, there's a sad day of reckoning coming. — Gene Stratton-Porter

With some people it makes a regular battlefield of the human heart - this struggle for self-expression," said Philip. "You are going to do beautiful work in the world, and do it well. — Gene Stratton-Porter

You people are not splitting wood, called Elnora. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Money was their God; work their religion ... — Gene Stratton-Porter

He only knew that he had lived up to his best impulse, and that is all any one can do. — Gene Stratton-Porter

What you have to give is taught in no college, and I am not sure but you would spoil yourself if you tried to run your mind through a set groove with hundreds of others. — Gene Stratton-Porter

She stood looking down a long time; finally she picked up a fine specimen of each of the roses and slowly dropped them on her father's grave. "There! You may have that many," she said. "You look a little too lonely, lying here beside the others with not a single one, but if you could speak, I wonder whether you would say, 'Thank you!' or 'Take the damn weeds off me!'" CHAPTER — Gene Stratton-Porter

It was a compound of self-reliance, hard knocks, heart hunger, unceasing work, and generosity. There was no form of suffering with which the girl could not sympathize, no work she was afraid to attempt, no subject she had investigated she did not understand. These things combined to produce a breadth and depth of character altogether unusual. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Such a big majority of book critics and authors have begun to teach, whether they really believe it or not, that no book is TRUE TO LIFE unless it is true to the WORST IN LIFE, that the idea has infected even the women. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Freckles never tired of studying the devotion of a fox mother to her babies. To him, whose early life had been so embittered by continual proof of neglect and cruelty in human parents toward their children, the love of these furred and feathered folk of the Limberlost was even more of a miracle than to the Bird Woman and the Angel. — Gene Stratton-Porter

It takes the very wisest person there is to know when to talk, and when to keep still. — Gene Stratton-Porter

I object," said the man emphatically. He stopped work again and studied Elnora. Even the watching mother could not blame him. Against the embankment, in the shade of the bridge Elnora's bright head, and her lavender dress made a picture worthy of much contemplation.
I object!" repeated the man. — Gene Stratton-Porter

The world is full of happy people but no one ever hears of them. You have to fight and make a scandal to get in the papers. No one knows about all the happy people ... — Gene Stratton-Porter

There is one great beauty in idealized romance: reading it can make no one worse than he is, while it may help thousands to a cleaner life and higher inspiration than they ever before have known. — Gene Stratton-Porter

That spring I decided if school didn't stop pretty soon, I'd run away again, and I didn't in the least care what they did to me. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Being dead was one thing, getting ready for a wedding another. — Gene Stratton-Porter

It really seems as if failure and hardship make more of a human being of folks than success. — Gene Stratton-Porter

My life has been fortunate in one glad way: I have lived mostly in the country and worked in the woods. For every bad man and woman I have ever known, I have met, lived with, and am intimately acquainted with an overwhelming number of thoroughly clean and decent people who still believe in God and cherish high ideals, and it is UPON THE LIVES OF THESE THAT I BASE WHAT I WRITE. To contend that this does not produce a picture true to life is idiocy. It does. It produces a picture true to ideal life; to the best that good men and good women can do at level best. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Is he well educated?"
"Yes, I think so, as far as he's gone," I answered. "Of course he will go on being educated every day of his life, same as father. He says it is all rot about 'finishing' your education. You never do. You learn more important things each day ... — Gene Stratton-Porter

All the time God ever spent on you was wasted, an' your mother's had the same luck. I s'pose God's used to having creatures 'at He's made go wrong, but I pity your mother. Goodness knows a woman suffers an' works enough over her children, an' then to fetch a boy to man's estate an' have him, of his own free will an' accord, be a liar! Young man, truth is the cornerstone o' the temple o' character. Nobody can put up a good buildin' without a solid foundation; an' you can't do solid character buildin' with a lie at the base. Man 'at's a liar ain't fit for anything! Can't trust him in no sphere or relation o' life; or in any way, shape, or manner. You passed out your word like a man, an' like a man I took it an' went off trustin' you, an' you failed me. — Gene Stratton-Porter

I was ignorant at first of bookish subjects, but in his atmosphere, if one were no student, and didn't even try to keep up, or forge ahead, they would absorb much through association. — Gene Stratton-Porter

As Wessner struggled to his feet, he resembled a battlefield, for his clothing was in ribbons and his face and hands streaming blood. "I--I guess I got enough," he mumbled. "Oh, you do?" roared Freckles. "Well this ain't your say. You come on to me ground, lying about me Boss and intimatin' I'd stale from his very pockets. Now will you be standing up and taking your medicine like a man, or getting it poured down the throat of you like a baby? I ain't got enough! This is only just the beginning with me. Be looking out there!" He sprang against Wessner and sent him rolling. He attacked the unresisting figure and fought him until he lay limp and quiet and Freckles had no strength left to lift an arm. Then he arose and stepped back, gasping for breath. With his first lungful of air he shouted: "Time!" But the figure of Wessner lay motionless. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Now what is a guest? A thing of a day! A person who disturbs your routine and interferes with important concerns. Why should any one be grateful for company? Why should time and money be lavished on visitors? They come. You overwork yourself. They go. You are glad of it. You return the visit, because it's the only way to have back at them ... — Gene Stratton-Porter

Turn her loose out of doors; give her good books, and leave her alone. You won't be disappointed in the woman who evolves. — Gene Stratton-Porter

My mother was the best and most beautiful woman who ever lived. She was clean, and good, and always helped "the poor and needy who cluster round your door," like it says in the poetry piece, and there never could have been a reason why God would want a woman to suffer herself, when she went flying on horseback even dark nights through rain or snow, to doctor other people's pain, and when she gave away things like she did - why, I've seen her take a big piece of meat from the barrel, and a sack of meal, and heaps of apples and potatoes to carry to Mandy Thomas - when she gave away food by the wagonload at a time, God couldn't have wanted her to be hungry, and yet she was that very minute almost crying for food; — Gene Stratton-Porter

dinner." Philip leaned toward her. "May I tell you to-morrow why I came?" he asked. "I think not," replied Elnora. "The fact is, I don't care why you came. It is enough for me that we are your very good friends, and that in trouble, you have found us a refuge. I fancy we had better live a week or two before you say anything. There is a possibility that what you have to say may change in that length of time. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Of course you do, child," said mother. "Families were made to cling together, and stand by each other in every circumstance of life - joy or sorrow. Of course you need your family. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Do you know that being a stranger is the hardest thing that can happen to any one in all this world? — Gene Stratton-Porter

My, I was scared!" Said Billy with a deep breath.
Scared?" Questioned Elnora.
Yes, sir-ee! Aunt Margaret scared me. May i ask you a question?"
Of course, you may!"
Is that man going to be you beau?"
Billy! No! What made you think such a thing?"
Aunt Margaret said likely he would fall in love with you, and you wouldn't want me around any more. Oh, but I was scared! It isn't so, is it?"
Indeed, no!"
I am your beau, ain't I?"
Surely you are!" said Elnora, tightening her arm.
I hope Aunt Kate has ginger cookies," said Billy with a little skip of delight. — Gene Stratton-Porter

If you are lazy, and accept your lot, you may live in it. If you are willing to work, you can write your name anywhere you choose. — Gene Stratton-Porter

She is the best-dressed woman in the county, and the best looking," said Mrs. Bates, "and that's all there is to her. — Gene Stratton-Porter

She said. Mrs. Comstock did not reply. She watched the girl follow the long walk to the gate and go from sight on the road, in the bright sunshine — Gene Stratton-Porter