At the Back of the North Wind Quotes

Only he knew that to be left alone is not always to be forsaken.

Well, perhaps; but I begin to think there are better things than being comfortable.

For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds.

...though I cannot promise to take you home," said North Wind, as she sank nearer and nearer to the tops of the houses, "I can promise you it will be all right in the end. You will get home somehow.

I am always hearing. . . the sound of a far off song. I do not exactly know where it is, or what it means; and I don't hear much of it, only the odour of its music, as it were, flitting across the great billows of the ocean outside this air in which I make such a storm; but what I do hear, is quite enough to make me able to bear the cry from the drowning ship. So it would you if you could hear it.'
'No it wouldn't,' returned Diamond stoutly. 'For they wouldn't hear the music of the far-away song; and if they did, it wouldn't do them any good. You see you and I are not going to be drowned, and so we might enjoy it.'
'But you have never heard the psalm, and you don't know what it is like. Somehow, I can't say how, it tells me that all is right; that it is coming to swallow up all the cries. . . . It wouldn't be the song it seems if it did not swallow up all their fear and pain too, and set them singing it themselves with all the rest.

Somehow, I can't say how, it tells me that all is right; that it is coming to swallow up all cries.

How kind you are, North Wind!'
'I am only just. All kindness is but justice. We owe it.

It's not good at all—mind that, Diamond—to do everything for those you love, and not give them a share in the doing. It's not kind. It's making too much of yourself.

And when heart and head go together, nothing can stand before them

His little heart was so full of merriment that it could not hold it all, and it ran over into theirs.

I wish I had [made that song]. No, I don't That would be to take it from somebody else. But it's mine for all that.'
'What makes it yours?'
'I love it so.'
'Does loving a thing make it yours?'
'I think so, Mother -- at least more than anything else can. . . . Love makes the only myness,' said Diamond.

It is a hard thing for a rich man to grow poor; but it is an awful thing for him to grow dishonest, and some kinds of speculation lead a man deep into dishonesty before he thinks what he is about. Poverty will not make a man worthless—he may be of worth a great deal more when he is poor than he was when he was rich; but dishonesty goes very far indeed to make a man of no value—a thing to be thrown out in the dust-hole of the creation, like a bit of broken basin, or dirty rag.

No; I'm not bad. But sometimes beautiful things grow bad by doing bad, and it takes some time for their badness to spoil their beauty. So little boys may be mistaken if they go after things because they beautiful.

That's a poet.'
'I thought you said it was a bo-at.'
'Stupid pet! Don't you know what a poet it?'
'Why, a thing to sail on the water in.'
'Well, perhaps you're not so far wrong. Some poets do carry people over the sea....'
...
'A poet is a man who is glad of something, and tries to make other people glad of it too.