Top 37 Quotes & Sayings by Alice Hegan Rice

Half of our sorrows come from setting exalted standards for people and then breaking our hearts when they fail to live up to them.

The hardest grief is often that which leaves no trace.

The discovery that it is in our power to change our lives by the thoughts we think is the first step toward spiritual mastery.

When one has a famishing thirst for happiness, one is apt to gulp down diversions wherever they are offered.

It seems a strange fact that it is almost more important for us to be happy ourselves than to try to make other people happy. By being happy we confer untold benefits upon our fellow men.

Solitude, if rightly used, becomes not only a privilege but a necessity. Only a superficial soul fears to fraternize with itself.

happiness is a duty, not only because of its effect upon us but because of its influence upon others.

Taking friendships for granted is one of the surest ways of ending them. Unless nourished, they tend to wither and die. Unless we earnestly desire its continuance we should never start a friendship any more than we would a love affair.

Metaphysicians tell us that it is easier to get the body well than to get the mind to realize its wellness.

It ain't no use putting up your umbrella till it rains.

Yer feelin's is like ras'berry vinegar: if you're skeered to use 'em an' keep on savin' 'em, first thing you know they've done 'vaporated!

It is not what we have but what we do with what we have that constitutes the value of life.

Just as a pool of water cannot reflect the sky overhead when it is restless and disturbed, so we can never get a perfect vision of the Divine, and show it to others when we are disturbed with human thoughts and personal problems. It is only when we are quite still and receptive that God can think His thoughts into us and use us for His purposes.

The fact that beauty is at one and the same time without cost and above price, robs it of the curse of possessiveness.

The arbitrary division of one's life into weeks and days and hours seemed, on the whole, useless. There was but one day for the men, and that was pay day, and one for the women, and that was rent day. As for the children, every day was theirs, just as it should be in every corner of the world.

Life is made up of desires that seem big and vital one minute, and little and absurd the next. I guess we get what's best for us in the end.

Somehow, I never feel like good things b'long to me till I pass 'em on to somebody else.

No teaching that is not based on reason can be tolerated by critical minds, but the belief that an accident of blind force produces this highly organized world is far more fantastic than the theory that a Super Intelligence devised its ordered evolution.

Cheerfulness is a debt we owe to society, in the paying of which we receive a generous discount. We can not open our hearts to give out cheer without more cheer rushing in to take its place.

In this noisy, restless, bewildering age, there is a great need for quietness of spirit. Even in our communion with God we are so busy presenting our problems, asking for help, seeking relief that we leave no moments of silence to listen for God's answers. By practice we can learn to submerge our spirits beneath the turbulent surface waves of life and reach that depth of our being where all is still, where no storms can reach us. Here only can we forget the material world and its demands on us.

even though disease and sorrow are all about us, health and happiness are the normal state of man.

There is an invariable law that the only way to keep the real things of life is by sharing them or giving them away.

What can people not accomplish if they will but master the secret of steadfast perseverance.

Mrs. Wiggs was a philosopher, and the sum and substance of her philosophy lay in keeping the dust off her rose-colored spectacles.

I can think of no habit, kept up through the years, that binds a married couple more than that of reading good books together. Domestic problems and personal problems are for the time forgotten, and an intellectual intimacy is established that can be maintained in few other ways.

Some people act as if there were a penalty for carrying concealed troubles. They exhibit them at every opportunity, begging for sympathy, even condescending to accept pity. Such persons never realize that the very ones to whom they are complaining are often struggling under a burden greater than their own.

It is a terrifying as well as hopeful truth that we tend to bring into being in form whatever we fashion in thought.

The fascinating thing about ideals is that no sooner have we gained a desired peak than we find farther and higher peaks beyond. The thrilling adventure never ends.

There is no doubt about it that it is more difficult for a woman to follow a career than for a man. Through the centuries his time has been considered more valuable, and he has consequently been excused from wrestling with many of 'life's minor damnabilities.

there ain't no use in dyin' 'fore yer time. Lots of folks is walkin' 'round jes' as dead as they'll ever be.

It'll be with me like it was with Uncle Ned's ole ox, I reckon; he kep' a-goin' an' a-goin' till he died a-standin' up, an' even then they had to push him over.

All the higher forms of life have evolved from some one's ideal of justice, liberty or beauty; and the belief that nothing is too good to be true.

we sometimes forget the influence of action upon thought. ... Smile, whistle, sing, play the part you want to be until you become the part you play.

any pursuit of happiness contrary to the common good is doomed to failure.

I believe in the immortality of the soul because I cannot conceive of an intelligent First Cause creating human beings through long process of evolution in this world only to destroy them.

Some folks goes right under when trouble comes, but I carry mine fur an' easy.

Joy is at its keenest when contrasted with sorrow, courage at its height when it follows fear, faith at its noblest when it grows from doubt.