Margaret Deland Quotes
as everybody knows, truthfulness and agreeable manners are often divorced on the ground of incompatibility.
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!
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!
conceit is the devil's horse, and reformers generally ride it when they are in a hurry.
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.
Grandmother belongs to the generation of women who were satisfied to have men retain their vices, if they removed their hats.
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.
... perhaps there is no conceit so arrogant as the conceit which follows a conviction of emancipation.
The anger of slow, mild, loving people has a lasting quality that mere bad-tempered folk cannot understand.
Of all the bitter and heavy things in this sorry old world, the not being necessary is the bitterest and heaviest.
... some of the things floating about in the Well of Memory are not worth recording.
... 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.
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!
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.
... 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
... 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?
It is useless to deny that, unless one has a genius for imparting knowledge, teaching is a drudgery.
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.
A pint can't hold a quart-if it holds a pint it is doing all that can be expected of it.
One must desire something to be alive: perhaps absolute satisfaction is only another name for Death.
A sneer is like a flame it may occasionally be curative because it cauterizes but it leaves a bitter scar.
