Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm Quotes

“The soul grows into lovely habits as easily as into ugly ones, and the moment a life begins to blossom into beautiful words and deeds, that moment a new standard of conduct is established, and your eager neighbors look to you for a continuous manifestation of the good cheer, the sympathy, the ready wit, the comradeship, or the inspiration, you once showed yourself capable of. Bear figs for a season or two, and the world outside the orchard is very unwilling you should bear thistles.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“Miranda Sawyer had a heart, of course, but she had never used it for any other purpose than the pumping and circulating of blood.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“There are certain narrow, umimaginative, and autocratic old people who seem to call out the most mischievous and sometimes the worst traits in children.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World,
With the wonderful water round you curled,
And the wonderful grass upon your breast,
World, you are beautifully drest!”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“It would be false to say that one could ever be alone when one has one's lovely thoughts to comfort one.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“Look at the pebbles in the bottom of the pool, Miss Emily, so round and smooth and shining." "Yes, but where did they get that beautiful polish, that satin skin, that lovely shape, Rebecca? Not in the still pool lying on the sands. It was never there that their angles were rubbed off and their rough surfaces polished, but in the strife and warfare of running waters. They have jostled against other pebbles, dashed against sharp rocks, and now we look at them and call them beautiful.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“The girl's eyes were soft and tender and the heart within her stretched a little and grew; grew in sweetness and intuition and depth of feeling. It had looked into another heart, felt it beat, and heard it sigh; and that is how all hearts grow.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“Why, mother!" cried Rebecca, clasping her knees with her hands; "why, mother, it's enough joy just to be here in the world on a day like this; to have the chance of seeing, feeling, doing, becoming! When you were seventeen, mother, wasn't it good just to be alive? You haven't forgotten?”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“The brimming glass that overflows its own rim moistens the earth about it.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“Rebecca's eyes were like faith,—"the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Under her delicately etched brows they glowed like two stars, their dancing lights half hidden in lustrous darkness. Their glance was eager and full of interest, yet never satisfied; their steadfast gaze was brilliant and mysterious, and had the effect of looking directly through the obvious to something beyond, in the object, in the landscape, in you. They had never been accounted for, Rebecca's eyes. The school teacher and the minister at Temperance had tried and failed; the young artist who came for the summer to sketch the red barn, the ruined mill, and the bridge ended by giving up all these local beauties and devoting herself to the face of a child,—a small, plain face illuminated by a pair of eyes carrying such messages, such suggestions, such hints of sleeping power and insight, that one never tired of looking into their shining depths, nor of fancying that what one saw there was the reflection of one's own thought.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“Grow old along with me,
     The best is yet to be.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“I don't think one ever forgets the spot where one lived as a child.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“eyes”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“fagging”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm [with Biographical Introduction]

“cast their babes to the crocodiles in the Ganges.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm [with Biographical Introduction]

“To be alive makes up for everything; there ought to be fears in my heart, but there aren't; something stronger sweeps them out; something like a wind.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“He is wrong; my talent is not a great one, but no talent is wholly wasted unless its owner chooses to hide it in a napkin. Remember that of your own gifts, Rebecca; they may not be praised of men, but they may cheer, console, inspire, perhaps, when and where you least expect. The brimming glass that overflows its own rim moistens the earth about it.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“To become sensible of oneness with the Divine heart before any sense of separation has been felt, this is surely the most beautiful way for the child to find God.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“Having learned the trick of beating and loving and suffering, the poor faithful heart persisted, although it lived on memories and carried on its sentimental operations mostly in secret.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“Rebecca's eyes were like faith,—"the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“Minnie had spasms of bravery, when well surrounded by the machinery of law and order.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“Not all at once can the soul talk with God, be He ever so near.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“I don’t expect you to believe it, but I have another idea—that’s two in one day;”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“for whether she knows anything or not, she looks as if she did, and whether she’s capable of filling an office or not, she looks as if she was.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“I’d never go back—I might be frightened, but I’d be ashamed to run.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm