Anne of Brittany Quotes

“At ten o'clock we arrived in Aspinwall, or, as it is always called there, Colon, this being the real name of the place, given by the people in honor of Columbus; Aspinwall is the name given by the Americans, but is not used on the Isthmus”
― Helen Josephine Sanborn, A Winter in Central America and Mexico.

“only 10 million of the required 250 million cubic meters of earth had yet been removed. The undertaking is a vast one, far exceeding that of the Suez canal, and every one there believed it would not be finished for many years”
― Helen Josephine Sanborn, A Winter in Central America and Mexico.

“we passed Costa Rica, and were near land. We had a most gorgeous sunset, and a full moon at night; besides, the water was all aglow with brilliant phosphorescence, which looked like great fiery serpents playing about the steamer”
― Helen Josephine Sanborn, A Winter in Central America and Mexico.

“It is an experience we would not part with for "the wealth of Ormus or of Ind." It is one we would not repeat for twice that sum”
― Helen Josephine Sanborn, A Winter in Central America and Mexico.

“There is nothing at any of our beaches at all comparable with the tremendous surf we saw at San Jose. Huge waves, mountains high, white and foaming, broke on the beach with a deafening roar and such awful power and fury as to make one shrink from the thought of launching upon its waters”
― Helen Josephine Sanborn, A Winter in Central America and Mexico.

“If kind words were said without meaning, simply to make us pleased with the speaker, the result was surely accomplished, and we felt more kindly disposed toward the whole of Guatemala for the pleasant words spoken in that musical language.”
― Helen Josephine Sanborn, A Winter in Central America and Mexico

“We gave the woman for her trouble a generous fee, with which she was highly pleased, and proceeded to put it in the bed under her sleeping husband's head. We laughingly told her not to put it there as he might get it, and it was money she had earned herself. She appreciated the joke, though it was told mostly by gestures, but seemed to have true ideas of the matrimonial relation, and was nothing loath to trust her all with him. page. 116”
― Helen Josephine Sanborn, A Winter in Central America and Mexico.

“They were sitting on the ground with baskets of the red berries before them, and in their embroidered dresses, with streaming black hair, made a picturesque group.”
― Helen Josephine Sanborn, A Winter in Central America and Mexico.

“The women seemed more industrious than the men, for they were housekeepers; and the noise of the Indian housewife patting her tortillas in preparation for breakfast was the only sound that ever broke the silence of our quiet morning rides. For what need have men to work in a land of perpetual summer, where fruits grow wild, and a small piece of ground will produce frijoles and corn, their sole living; where branches and stout vines from the woods furnish the framework of their houses, mud the covering, and palm leaves the thatching for the roof? They come up idle and careless in the sunshine, marry, grow old and die never having advanced a step beyond their fathers, nor, to all appearance, had a longing for better things. Yet there was never a more docile, kind-hearted happy people in the world, and who shall say they are not much better off than we, with our artificial wants, and strivings after the impossible? (pge 107)”
― Helen Josephine Sanborn, A Winter in Central America and Mexico.

“In our ascent we were often among the clouds hovering about the mountain, and for a while would be enveloped in fog and mist, or even rain, until we mounted above them into clear sunlight again.”
― Helen Josephine Sanborn, A Winter in Central America and Mexico