Margaret Deland quotes
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Truth is like heat or light; its vibrations are endless, and are endlessly felt.
-- Margaret Deland -
Nobody who is somebody looks down on anybody.
-- Margaret Deland -
One must desire something to be alive.
-- Margaret Deland -
A pint can't hold a quart - if it holds a pint it is doing all that can be expected of it.
-- Margaret Deland -
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As soon as you feel too old to do a thing, do it.
-- Margaret Deland -
One must desire something to be alive; perhaps absolute satisfaction is only another name for Death.
-- Margaret Deland -
conceit is the devil's horse, and reformers generally ride it when they are in a hurry.
-- Margaret Deland -
silence is very moving to youth, for who knows what it hides?
-- Margaret Deland -
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Grandmother belongs to the generation of women who were satisfied to have men retain their vices, if they removed their hats.
-- Margaret Deland -
we've all of us got to meet the devil alone. Temptation is a lonely business ...
-- Margaret Deland -
as everybody knows, truthfulness and agreeable manners are often divorced on the ground of incompatibility.
-- Margaret Deland -
there couldn't be war, unless lies were believed. War has to be nourished by lies.
-- Margaret Deland -
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War is wicked, beause it is murder and hate. And it is foolish, because hate and murder can only destroy people's bodies, not change their minds.
-- Margaret Deland -
weakness is a great bully without knowing it ...
-- Margaret Deland -
In connection with death, or birth, or love, modesty is only a rather puerile self-consciousness.
-- Margaret Deland -
it's better to be crazy on one point and happy, than sane on all points and unhappy.
-- Margaret Deland -
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I notice that when people have no sense of responsibility, you call them either criminals or geniuses.
-- Margaret Deland -
there are few things that are more endearing than the grace of listening with attention; indeed, it is more than endearing, it is impressive - for no one knows what wisdom lies concealed in silence!
-- Margaret Deland -
we middle-aged folk have the education of life, truly; we know the multiplication table of anxieties and sorrows, the subtraction table of loss, the division table of responsibility.
-- Margaret Deland -
moral vanity is the snare of good people.
-- Margaret Deland -
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What I object to in Mother is that she wants me to think her thoughts. Apart from the question of hypocrisy, I prefer my own.
-- Margaret Deland -
There is a bond, it appears, between mother and child which endures as long as they do. It is independent of love; reason cannot weaken it; hate cannot destroy it.
-- Margaret Deland -
Of all the bitter and heavy things in this sorry old world, the not being necessary is the bitterest and heaviest.
-- Margaret Deland -
When one promise jostles another, one of 'em isn't a promise.
-- Margaret Deland -
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nothing may be more selfish than remorse ...
-- Margaret Deland -
Books are like sapphires; they must be polished - polished! or else you insult your readers.
-- Margaret Deland -
... in a wicked way, it is an incentive to good living to observe the spice of enjoyment there is to a godly soul in a very little sin.
-- Margaret Deland -
... it is curious how fatal it is, either to a situation or to an individual, or even to a name, if in an evil moment it becomes funny.
-- Margaret Deland -
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... is there anything more unjust than to build gold and brass and iron on poor, well-meaning clay, -- and then blame the clay when the whole image falls into dust?
-- Margaret Deland -
Hearts don't come when Reason whistles to 'em.
-- Margaret Deland -
Fighting should be left to dogs and cats and chickens, who can't reason.
-- Margaret Deland -
... Love never forgets; or if it does, it is an imperfect love, like the beautiful love of a dog, faithful and unreasoning.
-- Margaret Deland -
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If you are kind to an enemy, you cannot hate him.
-- Margaret Deland -
... if a man really and truly believed that black was white, you might advise him to see an oculist, but you mustn't call him a liar.
-- Margaret Deland -
When did Youth ever thank Age for its wisdom?
-- Margaret Deland -
I have heard that a man might be his own lawyer, but you can't be your own judge.
-- Margaret Deland -
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... when personal happiness conflicts with any great human ideal, the right to claim such happiness is as nothing compared to the privilege of resigning it.
-- Margaret Deland -
... perhaps there is no conceit so arrogant as the conceit which follows a conviction of emancipation.
-- Margaret Deland -
Absurdity is the one thing love can't stand; it can overlook anything else, -- coldness, or weakness, or viciousness, -- but just be ridiculous and that's the end of it!
-- Margaret Deland -
There is no embarrassment quite like the embarrassment of listening to a person for whom one has a regard making a fool of himself.
-- Margaret Deland -
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Isn't there any statute of limitation in things spiritual? I don't believe any large mind dwells on its sins, any more than on its virtues!
-- Margaret Deland -
... there must be reserves -- except with God. The human soul is solitary. But for confession that is different; justice and reparation sometimes demand it; but, again, justice and courage sometimes forbid it.
-- Margaret Deland -
I've always thought the law ought to put on spectacles, it has mighty poor eyesight once in a while.
-- Margaret Deland -
Age, with shamefaced relief, has learned the solvent quality of Time. It is this quality which makes possible the contemplation of certain embarrassing heavenly reunions ...
-- Margaret Deland -
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... safety that depends on an apron-string is very unsafe!
-- Margaret Deland -
... some of the things floating about in the Well of Memory are not worth recording.
-- Margaret Deland -
Some time in our lives every man and woman of us, putting out our hands toward the stars, touch on either side our prison walls the immutable limitations of temperament
-- Margaret Deland -
A letter is a risky thing; the writer gambles on the reader's frame of mind.
-- Margaret Deland -
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I'm not to blame for an old body, but I would be to blame for an old soul. An old soul is a shameful thing.
-- Margaret Deland -
anger as well as love casts out fear ...
-- Margaret Deland -
The anger of slow, mild, loving people has a lasting quality that mere bad-tempered folk cannot understand.
-- Margaret Deland -
To talk over a quarrel, with its inevitable accompaniment of self-justification, is too much like handling cobwebs to be very successful.
-- Margaret Deland -
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There's one thing that always interests me about you good people, not your certainty that the rest of us are swine, - no doubt we are, - but your certainty that your opinions are pearls.
-- Margaret Deland -
Twenty-five years ago, Christmas was not the burden that it is now; there was less haggling and weighing, less quid pro quo, less fatigue of body, less weariness of soul; and, most of all, there was less loading up with trash.
-- Margaret Deland -
the profession of the ministry is like matrimony: if it is possible for you to keep out of it, it's a sign that you've no business to go into it!
-- Margaret Deland -
the blue and cloudless day closes like the lid of a casket of jewels upon the violet rim of sea, and shuts out the light.
-- Margaret Deland -
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Age, per se, may claim tenderness and pity, but not respect; that only comes when the years have brought humanity and wisdom and the experience that worketh hope.
-- Margaret Deland -
nothing is as conventional as adolescence.
-- Margaret Deland -
The insolence of time is like a blow in the face from an unseen enemy.
-- Margaret Deland -
There isn't any virtue where there has never been any temptation.
-- Margaret Deland -
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Convictions do not imply reasons.
-- Margaret Deland -
Conscience that isn't hitched up to common sense is a mighty dangerous thing.
-- Margaret Deland -
I have no faith in a human critter who hasn't one or two bad habits.
-- Margaret Deland -
Every new truth begins in a shocking heresy.
-- Margaret Deland -
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You can't have genius without patience.
-- Margaret Deland -
A sneer is like a flame; it may occasionally be curative because it cauterizes, but it leaves a bitter scar.
-- Margaret Deland -
Real divorce takes place without a decree ...
-- Margaret Deland -
When two duties jostle each other, one of 'em isn't a duty.
-- Margaret Deland -
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Nature is perfectly impartial. Brain has no sex!
-- Margaret Deland -
a great moment raises most of the people who experience it, to its own level; and that is why they do not always recognize its greatness - or their own.
-- Margaret Deland -
men love their wives not because of their virtues, but in spite of them.
-- Margaret Deland -
Home is the best place to be sick in.
-- Margaret Deland -
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a manufactured interest has no staying quality - especially if it involves any hard work.
-- Margaret Deland -
a short cut to matrimonial unhappiness is not to have the same taste in jokes!
-- Margaret Deland -
Lawyers make their cake by cooking up other people's troubles.
-- Margaret Deland -
When it comes to bombshells, there are few that can be more effective than that small, flat, frail thing, a letter.
-- Margaret Deland -
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The fact is, the secret of happiness is the sense of proportion ...
-- Margaret Deland -
the attempt to break a habit of years is necessarily experimental.
-- Margaret Deland -
It is useless to deny that, unless one has a genius for imparting knowledge, teaching is a drudgery.
-- Margaret Deland -
faith, it seems to me, is not the holding of certain dogmas; it is simply openness and readiness of heart to believe any truth which God may show.
-- Margaret Deland -
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if you give way to fear, you'll be a coward; and ... a coward is apt to be a liar. The devil's first name is Fear ...
-- Margaret Deland -
as I get older there is nothing more constantly astonishing to me than the goodness of the Bad; - unless it is the badness of the Good.
-- Margaret Deland -
gossip, after it reaches a certain point of insult and falsehood, becomes a source of amusement to its victims.
-- Margaret Deland -
by some mysterious method, Susan Carr's gossip gave the listener a gentler feeling towards his kind. When she spoke of her neighbors' faults, one knew that somehow they were simply virtues gone to seed ...
-- Margaret Deland -
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Grief is the price Love pays for being in the same world with Death.
-- Margaret Deland -
habit does much to reconcile us to unpleasantness ...
-- Margaret Deland -
Self-sacrifice which denies common sense is not a virtue. It's a spiritual dissipation.
-- Margaret Deland
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