Top 44 Quotes & Sayings by Gene Stratton-Porter

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.

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.

Of two evils, I always choose the lesser.

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

The seasons run with swift feet.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

a trouble shared is a trouble half endured.

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

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

Money was their God; work their religion.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

What you are lies with you. 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, among the only ones who live beyond the grave in this world, the people who write books that help, make exquisite music, carve statues, paint pictures, and work for others. Never mind the calico dress, and the coarse shoes. Work at you books, and before long you will hear yesterday's tormentors boasting that they were once classmates of yours.

Nature always levies her tribute.

There never was a moment in my life, when I felt so in the Presence, as I do now. I feel as if the Almighty were so real, and so near, that I could reach out and touch Him, as I could this wonderful work of His, if I dared. I feel like saying to Him: 'To the extent of my brain power I realize Your presence, and all it is in me to comprehend of Your power. Help me to learn, even this late, the lessons of Your wonderful creations. Help me to unshackle and expand my soul to the fullest realization of Your wonders. Almighty God, make me bigger, make me broader!

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

In the economy of nature nothing is ever lost. I cannot belive that the soul of man shall prove the one exception

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I know men and women. An honourable man is an honourable man, and a liar is a liar; both are born and not made. One cannot change to the other any more than that same old leopard can change its spots. After a man tells a woman the first untruth of that sort, the others come piling thick, fast, and mountain high.

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

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

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

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.