Gene Stratton-Porter Quotes

How a big majority of book critics and authors have come to believe and to teach that no book is true to life unless it is true to the worst in life, God knows.

Nature can be trusted to work her own miracle in the heart of any man whose daily task keeps him alone among her sights, sounds and silences.

I write as the birds sing, because I must, and usually from the same source of inspiration.

There was an exquisitely beautiful conception in my brain when I did this piece of work all alone from midnight until morning after the experience of a wonderful day. But I was not able to make the consummation anywhere nearly as beautiful as the inspiration. That, I suppose, is the cry of every heart struggling for self-expression.

Is he well educated?" "Yes, I think so, as far as he's gone," I answered.

"Of course he will go on being educated every day of his life, same as father. He says it is all rot about 'finishing' your education. You never do. You learn more important things each day.

The wages of sin are the hardest debts on earth to pay, and they are always collected at inconvenient times and unexpected places.

Do you know that being a stranger is the hardest thing that can happen to any one in all this world?

We never know the timber of a man's soul until something cuts into him deeply and brings the grain out strong. You've the making of a mighty fine piece of furniture.

I do not know why it is the fate of the world always to want something different from what life gives them.

the friend in need is the one who is the friend in deed;

... if people were not friends in need, there was every likelihood that they never would be friends again in any conditions that might obtain.

One feature about Los Angeles that I particularly love is the chance for association with all kinds of creative artists, a thing I never before have had. I certainly do love a number of the writers, the painters, the musicians, and the sculptors that I meet here. ... Next to the sunshine, I appreciate it the most of anything in California.

My publishers will make any kind of a beautiful book I design and send in to them, but ... For poetry they have less use than a rooster would have for skates.

Now what is a guest? A thing of a day! A person who disturbs your routine and interferes with important concerns. Why should any one be grateful for company? Why should time and money be lavished on visitors? They come. You overwork yourself. They go. You are glad of it. You return the visit, because it's the only way to have back at them.

I do not believe there is any one study that can be taken up that will broaden the imagination, that will be the source from which will spring more deep thinking and sincere research than the study of astronomy.

Money was their God; work their religion.

The world is full of happy people but no one ever hears of them.

You have to fight and make a scandal to get in the papers. No one knows about all the happy people.

the occasional cries of a lost loon, strayed from its flock in northern migration, fill the swamp with sounds of wailing.

Being dead was one thing, getting ready for a wedding another.

What was money that it should make such dreadful things of men and women?

In the economy of nature nothing is ever lost.

I cannot belive that the soul of man shall prove the one exception

But Aunt Margaret doesn't like boys," objected Elnora. "Well, she likes me, and I used to be a boy.

The Cardinal ... It was as if a pulsing heart of flame passed by when he came winging through the orchard.

The seasons run with swift feet.

Nature always levies her tribute.

there was nothing in the whole world so dreadful as the power of riches wrongly used.

Be sure that you are right; and then go ahead.

It really seems as if failure and hardship make more of a human being of folks than success.

Tears were a blessing; they were a relief; they did wash the ache from the heart, ease brain strain, and encourage the soul.

we know by the odour that occasionally we are visited by skunks, which are not poetic but very beautiful.

When any man accumulates more than he can earn with his own hands, he begins to enrich himself at the expense of the youth, the sweat, the blood, the joy of his fellow men.

it takes the very wisest person there is to know when to talk, and when to keep still.

Sometimes it seems to me that the more we get hurt in this world the decenter it makes us.

I don't so much mind the falling, but I do seem to select the hardest spots to light on.

Of two evils, I always choose the lesser.

Every intoxicating delight of early spring was in the air.

The breeze that fanned her cheek was laden with subtle perfume and the crisp, fresh odor of unfolding leaves.

a trouble shared is a trouble half endured.

If you are lazy, and accept your lot, you may live in it.

If you are willing to work, you can write your name anywhere you choose.

To my way of thinking and working, the greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to leave him with a higher ideal of life than he had when he began. If in one small degree it shows him where he can be...gentler, saner, cleaner, kindlier...it is a wonder-working book. If it opens his eyes to one beauty in nature he never saw for himself and leads him one step toward the God of the Universe, it is a beneficial book.

To my way of thinking and working, the greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to force him to lay it down with a higher ideal of life than he had when he took it up.

You cannot write on the heart of another what you do not feel yourself.

no one in the whole world knows all a man's bignesses and all his littlenesses as his wife does.