Gertrude Atherton Quotes
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It is a pretty trick of authors to make nature ever in sympathy with man, but as a matter of fact she seldom is.
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Whether you fail or set the world on fire cannot make so very much difference if only you have the opportunity to try for it, to work for it, to think of nothing else!
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No matter how hard a man may labor, some woman is always in the background of his mind. She is the one reward of virtue.
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There is nothing so carking as the pangs of unsatisfied curiosity.
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Nothing in life is more corroding than habit.
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If you can't get the very best in this world, take nothing.
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It took me years to learn that character is fate and that no one can be made over.
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Men are not amusing during the shooting season; but, after all, my dear, men were not especially designed to amuse women.
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No country can reach a high stage of civilization without a leisure class.
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The only two good words that can be said for a hurricane are that it gives sufficient warning of its approach, and that it blows from one point of the compass at a time.
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When I am alone in the forest I always say my prayers; and that occasional solitary communion with God is surely the only true religion for intelligent beings.
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Fiction is not only the historian of life but its apologist.
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Writing was my real life and I was more at home with the people of my imagination than with the best I met in the objective world.
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The best of all good friends is pride.
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The minority of one generation is usually the majority of the next.
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Fame compensates for a column of wants.
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Women love the lie that saves their pride, but never an unflattering truth.
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I have come to the conclusion that the modern interpretation of the Declaration of Independence is something like this: I am as good as those that think themselves better and a long sight better than those who only think themselves as good.
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If there's a spirit world why don't the ghosts of dead artists get together and inhibit bad playwrights from tormenting first-nighters?
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The final result of too much routine is death in life.
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There is a strong conservative instinct in the average man or woman, born of the hereditary fear of life, that prompts them to cling to old standards, or, if too intelligent to look inhospitably upon progress, to move very slowly. Both types are the brakes and wheelhorses necessary to a stable civilization, but history, even current history in the newspapers, would be dull reading if there were no adventurous spirits willing to do battle for new ideas.
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In times of panic man seems to exchange his soul for a tail.
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I see no present solution of a great and intricate problem but that the rich should realize their duty to the poor.