As in a Mirror Quotes

“I wonder what can be the matter with Nannie?” added Lillian, her next in age, and most intimate sister. “She hasn’t been her real self for weeks, it seems to me. If getting ready to be married has such an effect on everybody’s nerves as it does on hers, I hope I shall never have to go through the ordeal.”
― Pansy, As in a Mirror

“The one had sinned ignorantly, as a child; the other had held back like a girl who knew too much about the world of sin. And the older sister, weeping and praying, realized what the sisters and mothers of today are so slow to learn: that ignorance is not a shield.”
― Pansy, As in a Mirror

“That is what I am,” he said irritably, “simply an object of suspicion; the boy frankly tells me of it! I am a fool, and I continue to get myself more deeply involved each day. Yet what can I do? It would be the vilest ingratitude to leave them just now, in their trouble; but until I do leave them I fear there is nothing that I can do to help them. I have put myself into a strange position, certainly.”
― Pansy, As in a Mirror

“where the attending physician has failed; and as a last resort, you, the great Dr. Hartwell, are called in council, and you save a life! Just think of it, Rex; a life! And then compare that with the work or a lawyer!”
― Pansy, As in a Mirror

“and Elfrida said he was the only man they ever had who knew enough to say “Miss Elfrida.” The family laughed at this, but Elfrida stoutly affirmed that that was the way they always did in books, and she liked it. She thought it would be very much nicer if Susan were directed to say, “Miss Elfrida,” instead of shouting out “Elf” as she actually sometimes did.”
― Pansy, As in a Mirror

“That sermon preached by Dr. Talbert on that first Sabbath in July had been the last that he had heard. Not that he had not on each succeeding Sabbath been within sound of the church bell, but the truth was he could not get the consent of himself to appear in church in the costume he was wearing. He told himself that he should attract too much attention, and detract from the comfort of others by his presence.”
― Pansy, As in a Mirror

“Being very hungry he tried again, though he began to admit to himself that it would be easier to steal something”
― Pansy, As in a Mirror

“As for the anxiety of my mother and other friends, they are to know nothing about it, so they will not be troubled. If I come to downright grief, I’ll remember you and your bank account.” “You will be back looking after your own, as usual, within the month.” “Possibly; in which case I shall have accomplished all I care to in this line. I make no professions of having become a tramp for the remainder of my natural life.”
― Pansy, As in a Mirror

“Without exception they answered him curtly in the negative, without question or remark. They had no work for such as he. He might be very hungry, but it was doubtless his own fault, and in any case there were charities, breakfast missions and what not, for wretches of his stamp. If their faces expressed any thought of him at all, the tramp concluded that it took that form.”
― Pansy, As in a Mirror

“It is all a farce, you see; you can’t be a tramp. A man who knows that he has a fortune behind him that he can fall back upon at any moment, cannot feel as the poor tramp does, and it is folly to try.”
― Pansy, As in a Mirror

“There were men, yes, and women, who would dive into filthy streets and alleys in search of the lost; who would give whole afternoons to seeking out and ministering to tenement house sufferers; who would go, even on days when the thermometer stood as high as it does today, to jails and prisons and other poorly ventilated places to try to teach the depraved—and these very same men and women would turn away from their doors a hungry man who asked for food, with a harsh refusal, and not a word of inquiry as to what had brought him to that state, nor the slightest attempt to win him to a better life.”
― Pansy, As in a Mirror