Robin > Robin's Quotes

“Affections cannot be stolen, madam. They are given freely or not at all.”
― Rachel Field, All This, and Heaven Too

“Isn't it strange some people make
You feel so tired inside,
Your thoughts begin to shrivel up
Like leaves all brown and dried!
But when you're with some other ones,
It's stranger still to find
Your thoughts as thick as fireflies
All shiny in your mind!”
― Rachel Field

“Integrity of thought, flexibility of mind, and a consuming curiosity concerning the world and its occupants were the touchstones to her friendship. Whether she happened to find these in some struggling gifted youth or in some person of recognized achievement, her response was equally sincere. The sensitive antennae of her own sympathy and human awareness reached out in a roomful of people and unerringly found minds to quicken hers, talents to match her own. She loved wit, but not at the expense of wisdom. She delighted in good company and the exchange of talk, yet she was seldom deceived by mere superficial brilliance.” -p. 505”
― Rachel Field, All This, and Heaven Too

“The more one suffered and lived, the more one had known of joy and grief, the deeper the response must be if an artist were great enough to summon it.”
― Rachel Field, All This, and Heaven Too

“Oh, well, it might look like a patterned world, laid out in prim design, but to those living there it could never be so simple. They were as alive as she: that old peasant contriving to outwit the cold; that woman anxiously counting her comical flock lest one goose escape her vigilance; all those who slept, or toiled, or loved under the low-hung roofs or the sharp turrets. Those people out there, if they caught sight of her own face pressed close to the window pane, might be speculating about her. To them she was part of the pattern of the lumbering train with its trail of smoke and little boxlike carriages. Perhaps they envied her, riding at ease to distant Paris. How little they knew of that! How little she herself know what awaited her at the end of the journey!”
― Rachel Field

“I heard it once again, coming to me across miles of air from a far away concert hall. I knew when I heard the drums begin their familiar beat of hammers on the wooden hulls what I had known so surely that night of his concert and out there alone with him in the sort, that nothing which has ever stirred the heard can be lost to us.”
― Rachel Field

“I heard it once again, coming to me across miles of air from a far away concert hall. I knew when I heard the drums begin their familiar beat of hammers on the wooden hulls what I had known so surely that night of his concert and out there alone with him in the storm, that nothing which has ever stirred the heard can be lost to us.”
― Rachel Field

“But I was so sure of myself. I believed I could manage my own life. Mud might spatter and spoil other skirts, but not mine. Somehow I believed no harm could come to me because I meant no harm to others. I was defiant and proud because I felt too sure of myself.’
“‘You are not the first to make that mistake,’ he answered gravely. ‘We all believe our lives are our own till we find we cannot separate them from other lives.’” -p. 300”
― Rachel Field

“Reputation is a prize you’ve won for yourself with self-denial and hard work. If you throw it away, what have you left to fall back on? How will you contrive to live without it?” -p. 198”
― Rachel Field, All This, and Heaven Too

“It only takes a drop of poison to turn what is sound to something rotten and corrupt.” -p. 201”
― Rachel Field, All This, and Heaven Too

“When questioned in court (and she refused a lawyer): “All her life she had loved words and kindled to them, but now she was in their power. They shot to and fro, like shuttles weaving the threads of some invisible pattern…
“The quick blade of his irony delicately laid bare the tissues wrapping cause and motive. He must trap her into some unguarded admission of complicity. But she, too, held a blade as powerful as her questioners. She was speaking the truth. She had nothing to hide from him.” -p. 295”
― Rachel Field, All This, and Heaven Too

“The daily venom of the Duchesse’s jealousy had corroded his self-control. It was as if an oak tree that had defied storms and woodsmen had fallen at last under the incessant hammerings of a woodpecker.” -p. 299”
― Rachel Field, All This, and Heaven Too