Top 101 Quotes & Sayings by Myrtle Reed - Page 2

The conventions of society are all in the interests of morality. If you're conventional, you'll be good, in a negative sense, of course.

If we could only use other folks' experience, this here world would be heaven in about three generations, but we're so constructed that we never believe fire'll burn till we poke our own fingers into it to see. Other folks' scars don't go no ways at all toward convincin' us.

A book, unlike any other friend, will wait, not only upon the hour but upon the mood.

... sometimes, out of bitterness, the years distill forgiveness.

The fine gifts of temperament and imagination which are essential to the production of true poetry are often accompanied by morbid sensibility. The soul capable of ecstasy and transport must pay its price in suffering; he who walks upon the heights must sometimes grovel in the dust.

A good forgettery is a happier possession than a good memory.

It saves trouble to be conventional, for you're not always explaining things.

... the song of the world is all of love.

I experienced the discomfort of those who have moved mentally, but are still clamped, physically, to the places they have moved from.

When we get civilised, I believe children will go by number until they get old enough to choose their own names.

Nothing is bad which does not harm either you or someone else.

The body grows by food and work, the mind by use, and the soul through joy and pain.

When things hurt us, we're merely on our way to another spiritual environment.

Did you ever read a love-letter that wasn't an evidence of idiocy - except your own?

[On marriage:] Someone once said that it was like a crowded church - those outside were endeavouring to get in, and those inside were making violent efforts to get out.

Love and hate always remember; it is only indifference that forgets.

The spirit in which one earns his daily bread means as much to his soul as the bread itself may mean to his body.

At twenty, men love woman; at thirty, a woman; and at forty, women.

Womankind suffers from three delusions: marriage will reform a man, a rejected lover is heartbroken for life, and if the other women were only out of the way, he would come back.

marriage is a great strain upon love.

Three things I have longed to see ... The sea serpent, a white rhinoceros, and an unselfish man.

Those who have been made great have first suffered.

Money may not be your best friend, but it's the quickest to act, and seems to be favorably recognized in more places than most friends are.

In every life there is a perfect moment, like a flash of sun. We can shape our days by that, if we will - before by faith, and afterward by memory.

There is a great deal of trouble in this world which is not caused by people keeping their mouths shut.

There are many people who consider love a dream, but they usually grow to think of marriage as the cold breakfast.

Before, you think of it as a permanent bond of happiness; later, you see that it is a yoke, borne unequally. You marry to keep love, but sometimes that is the surest way to lose it.

Gossip is the social mosquito.

If there's anythin' on earth that can be more tryin' than any kind of relative, I don't know what it is, but relatives by marriage comes first - easy.

... no matter how one's heart aches, one can do the necessary things and do them well.

Content is a matter of temperament rather than circumstance.

Home is a place where we all do as we please - usually regardless of the others.

Marriage is the cold potato of love.

The river itself portrays humanity precisely, with its tortuous windings, its accumulation of driftwood, its unsuspected depths, and its crystalline shallows, singing in the Summer sun. Barriers may be built across its path, but they bring only power, as the conquering of an obstacle is always sure to do. Sometimes when the rocks and stone-clad hills loom large ahead, and eternity itself would be needed to carve a passage, there is an easy way around. The discovery of it makes the river sing with gladness and turns the murmurous deeps to living water, bright with ripples and foam.

Nothing in the world was ever built without a dream at the beginning.

One uncongenial guest can ruin a dinner more easily than a poor salad, and that is saying a great deal.

when one has learned to wait patiently, one has learned to live.

Marriage is the process by which a woman deprives herself of an escort.

the world has been fair cruel if you've never known the love of a dog!

But somewhere on the great world the sun is always shining, and, just so sure as you live, it will sometime shine on you.

Not infrequently, when a man asks a woman to marry him, he means that he wants her to help him love himself, and if, blinded by her own feeling, she takes him for her captain, her pleasure craft becomes a pirate ship, the colours change to a black flag with a sinister sign, and her inevitable destiny is the coral reef.