Emily of Deep Valley Quotes

“I'm finished with something, but I'm not beginning anything. That's wrong. When you finish something, you ought always to begin something new.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley

“A house with nothing old in it seems - unseasoned.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley

“We have to build our lives out of what materials we have. It's as though we were given a heap of blocks and told to build a house.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley

“Muster your wits: stand in your own defense.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley

“Emily interrupted.
"Don," she said. "would you mind going home?"
He pulled his soft hat violently down over his forehead. "I suppose you think that I'm a cad."
"I just don't think about you. Good-by," Emily said, and closed the door firmly behind him.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley

“Emily of a warm feeling of pleasure about the request to call.
Don had always just dropped in, indifferent to her convenience. Cab had only taken her to dances. There was a flattering formality, an indication of a genuine wish to get acquainted, about Jed Wakeman's overture. It gratified her.
The ungratifying though occurred that he might be coming just to talk about the Syrians.
"What makes me have ideas like that?" she asked herself. "There's a side of my nature that's always trying to pull me down - the way Don does. Well, I won't allow it! He asked to call because he likes me. And I like him. And I'm glad he's coming.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley

“She did bring home books from the library, in armloads, replenishing them every two or three days. She read avidly, indiscriminately, using them as an antidote for the pain in her heart. But they didn't help much. There was no one to talk them over with.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley

“Tall and rangy in ankle-length skirts, her curly hair woven into a braid which was turned up with a ribbon. . . . Emily wasn’t plain, exactly, but her face was serious. She was shy and quiet, although her blue eyes, set in a thicket of lashes under heavy brows, often glinted with fun.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley: A Deep Valley Book

“But so many houses here have nothing old at all. And a house with nothing old in it seems—unseasoned.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley: A Deep Valley Book

“She wasn’t tired of her friends, but she was tired of pursuing them as though her own life were worthless.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley: A Deep Valley Book

“Library copies were all very well, but when you loved a book as much as he loved that one, you ought to own it.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley: A Deep Valley Book

“She snatched off the ribbon, unbraided her hair and brushed it out vigorously. It rebounded in curly spirals. “The reason I didn’t put up my hair was that I was clinging to high school,” she thought. “There doesn’t seem to be anything in my future, so I’m clinging to the past. “But I can’t stop living. I can’t tie up my life like Chinese women do their feet. I’ve got to go on somehow.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley: A Deep Valley Book

“She was glad to hurry away, for the glory of his coming almost choked her. She could hardly believe that she was hearing his deep voice, that he was standing in her yard, suave, sophisticated, in a light summer suit with a straw hat.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley: A Deep Valley Book

“It was too bad, Emily reflected, turning east to Broad Street, that she had to go so early, for the cemetery on the afternoon before Decoration Day was a very social place. It was full of people putting their family graves in spic and span order. At the Episcopal Church, she took the curving road up Cemetery Hill and passed through the tall arched gate.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley: A Deep Valley Book

“He was always so happy, and she was sometimes depressed, although not so often as she used to be. And he was so completely unselfconscious, so untroubled by perplexities and doubts of the sort which had always beset her. But they beset her less and less. He was always confident, without being at all vain, and he was building that same confidence in her.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley

“They turned and looked down to the roof of the little house.
"This seemed like a long way from home when I was a little girl. I used to bring picnics up here."
"Alone?"
"Oh, yes! Unless I brought a doll along."
She had never, she realized, talked about herself with Don. Don had never thought of her or her problems. Jed liked to hear about her childhood and her growing up. Little by little she had told him almost all there was to tell - about her parents, and her grandmother; her differentness in school; even the great pain of not being able to go to college.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley

“And when she went that far in her thoughts it sounded absurd. Was she the same Emily Webster who had been so humble and adoring with Don? Could it be she seriously thought it possible that anyone so desirable as Jed Wakeman could be in love with her? The truth was that she did.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley

“How do you do it?" Jed asked.
"Oh, Miss Fowler loaned me Arnold Bennett's book, How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day." But then, because she could really talk with Jed, she grew serious.
"I filled my winter up in a sort of desperation. I just couldn't seem to face it that I wasn't going to college."
They were having cocoa in front of the coal stove after a skating expedition. Jed looked at her with a puzzled expression.
"What made you feel so badly about not going to college?"
"I love to learn."
"But you certainly haven't stopped learning."
"I'd like to be - a really cultured person."
"Well, you're certainly on the way to being. And Emily - it's a good thing for the Syrians of Deep Valley that you didn't go to college."
Her eyes filled with tears.
Jed reached over and patted her hand.
"Speaking of Syrians, that board meeting's coming up Friday night. May I call for you? Miss Bangeter has asked me to present our case, but if I run into difficulties I'll turn to you like Jerry Sibley did before the St. John game.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley

“That Jed Wakeman is *nice*," Emily remarked aloud when she reached her own room. He was, she thought, such a happy normal person, so - outgiving.
Her eyes chanced to fall on Don's picture inspecting her disdainfully. She took it up and changed it from the front row of pictures to the back. As she did so she wished she could put him that easily into the background of her life.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley

“Everything he said seemed complimentary, somehow, although he wasn't gallant in the artificial sense. But plainly he liked her, and she liked him.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley

“She felt heavy and lifeless, and her mind reached out despairingly for something to fill the day.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley

“Depression settled down upon her, and although she tried to brush it away it thickened like a fog.
...But she felt lonely and deserted and futile.
"A mood like this has to be fought...”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley