Top 101 Quotes & Sayings by Myrtle Reed

Lots of people think they're charitable if they give away their old clothes and things they don't want.

Silence and reserve will give anyone a reputation for wisdom.

If we all tried to make other people's paths easy, our own feet would have a smooth even place to walk on.

Art, if it is art, will develop in whatever circumstances it is placed.

When the years bring wisdom, one learns to leave many problems to their own working out.

each separate flower has a magic all its own.

There is only one path which leads to the house of forgiveness - that of understanding.

One of the most interesting things in the world to me is the vast difference between what people say they are going to do, and what they actually do.

it always seems to me as if the lavender was a little woman in a green dress, with a lavender bonnet and a white kerchief. She's one of those strong, sweet, wholesome people, who always rest you, and her sweetness lingers long after she goes away.

Fortunately age does not affect literature. After a man is dead, he may continue in the business and often rank higher than his living competitors.

Heart-aches are forgotten, tears lose their bitterness, and like a leaf of lavendar in a store of linen, so does Memory make life sweet.

A man likes to feel that he is loved, a woman likes to be told.

Revolution is obstructed evolution.

The appointed thing comes at the appointed time in the appointed way.

The things that are ours cannot be given away, or taken away, or lost. We break our hearts, all of us, trying to keep things that do not belong to us — and to which we have no right.

There isn't a new sorrow in the world -- they're all old ones -- but we can all find new happiness if we look in the right way.

I've just washed my hair and I can't do a thing with it!

No woman need fear the effect of absence upon the man who honestly loves her. The needle of the compass, regardless of intervening seas, points forever toward the north. Pitiful indeed is she who fails to be a magnet and blindly becomes a chain.

The heart's seasons seldom coincide with the calendar. Who among us has not been made desolate beyond all words upon some golden day when the little creatures of the air and meadow were life incarnate, from sheer joy of living? Who among us has not come home, singing, when the streets were almost impassable with snow, or met a friend with a happy, smiling face, in the midst of a pouring rain?

There is always one way to make anybody do anything - the trouble is to find it.

Activity is a sovereign remedy for the blues.

A bird is joy incarnate.

when you can't see straight ahead, it's because you're about to turn a corner.

I had thought, in my blindness, that the great things were the easiest to do, but now I see that drudgery is an inseparable part of everything worth while, and the more worth while it is, the more drudgery is involved.

When a little pleasure has flashed for a moment against the dark, I have made that jewel mine. I have hundreds of them ... I call it my Necklace of Perfect Joy. When the world goes wrong, I have only to close my eyes and remember all the links in my chain, set with gems, some large and some small, but all beautiful with the beauty which never fades. It is all I can take with me when I go. My material possessions must stay behind, but my Necklace of Perfect Joy will bring me happiness to the end, when I put it on, to be nevermore unclasped.

A letter has distinct advantages. You can say all you want to say before the other person has a chance to put in a word.

When we come to the sundown road, we need all the love we have managed to take with us from the summit of the hill.

Making an issue of a little thing is one of the surest ways to spoil happiness.

It seems to take a lifetime for us to learn that wisdom consists largely in a graceful acceptance of things that do not immediately concern us.

On that first day when we look back, either happily or with remorse, to the stony ways over which we have traveled, losing concern for that part of the journey which is yet to come, we have grown old.

Impermanence is the very essence of joy-the drop of bitterness that enables one to perceive the sweet.

Legislation may at times be disobeyed, but never law, for the breaking brings swift punishment of its own.

I've always thought my flowers had souls.

Pedestals are always lonely.

It is possible for a spinster to be disappointed in lovers, but only the married are ever disappointed in love.

The only way to win happiness is to give it. The more we give, the more we have.

All we can do in this world is the thing that seems to us the best. We have no concern with the results, except as a guide for the future, and sometimes, years afterward, we see that what seemed like a bitter loss was, in reality, gain.

Anger is a better weapon than tears; a burr commands more respect than a sensitive plant.

I have a friend, physically magnificent, who combines within himself the intellect of a philosopher, the diplomacy of a statesman, the executive ability of the general of an army, the courtesy of a Chesterfield - and the emotions of a rabbit.

Some women are born to be married, some achieve marriage, and others have marriage thrust upon them.

Sins of commission are far more productive of happiness than the sins of omission.

Conceit is lovable and unconcealed ; vanity is supreme selfishness, usually hidden.

Death is the advertisement, at the end of an autobiography, wherein people discover its virtues.

When you borrow trouble you give your peace of mind as security.

Five golden years, Heart of Mine, have we walked the way of life together, and there is not an hour I would have changed; there is no moment when I would have you other than you have been. It is the fashion these days, I know, to say that love ends at the altar, but it is not so. You and I have found the old dream of the world divinely true. It is neither a poet's fancy nor a trick of the imagination, but a thing of fadeless and unending beauty.

Silence always gives consent.

Of all the things that make for happiness, the love of books comes first. No matter how the world may have used us, sure solace lies there.

Love is an orchid which thrives principally on hot air.

It all depends on the way you look at it. The point of view is everything in this world.

May our house always be too small to hold all of our friends.

For the size of it, a check book is about the greatest convenience I know of.

Married and unmarried women waste a great deal of time in feeling sorry for each other.

After the door of a woman's heart has once swung on its silent hinges, a man thinks he can prop it open with a brick and go away and leave it.

Youth asks no greater privilege than to fight its own battles. It is mistaken kindness to shield - it weakens one in the years to come.

How strange it is that life must be nearly over, before one fully learns to live!

Penetrate deeply in the secret existence of anyone about you, even of the man or woman whom you count happiest, and you will come upon things they spend all their efforts to hide. Fair as the exterior may be, if you go in, you will find bare places, heaps of rubbish that can never be taken away, cold hearths, desolate altars, and windows veiled with cobwebs.

A real love letter is absolutely ridiculous to everyone except the writer and the recipient.

As if by magic, the love of the many comes with the love of the one.

It is personal vanity of the most flagrant type which intrudes itself, unasked, into other people's affairs. There are few of us who do not feel capable of ordering the daily lives of others, down to the most minute detail.

it is bad manners to contradict a guest. You must never insult people in your own house - always go to theirs.