Bess Streeter Aldrich Quotes

It was true, she thought, that the big things awe us but the little things touch us.

In 1846 the prairie town of Oak River existed only in a settler’s dream.

They are the most painful tears in the world … the tears of the aged … for they come from dried beds where the emotions have long burned low.

There is no division nor subtraction in the heart-arithmetic of a good mother. There are only addition and multiplication.

Junior was eleven. The statement is significant. There are a few peevish people in the world who believe that all eleven-year-old boys ought to be hung. Others, less irritable, think that gently chloroforming them would seem more humane. A great many good-natured folks contend that incarceration for a couple of years would prove the best way to dispose of them.

thoughts are acrobats, agile and quite often untrustworthy.

Some girls are apparently born with dates; some through much personal activity, achieve them; but others seem by necessity to have dates thrust upon them.

I think that love is more like a light that you carry. At first childish happiness keeps it lighted and after that romance. Then motherhood lights it and then duty . . . and maybe after that sorrow. You wouldn’t think that sorrow could be a light, would you, dearie? But it can. And then after that, service lights it. Yes. . . . I think that is what love is to a woman . . . a lantern in her hand.

When I was young I had no means or time, and now I have the means and time, I have no youth.

A person may encircle the globe with mind open only to bodily comfort. Another may live his life on a sixty-foot lot and listen to the voices of the universe.

The greatest antidote in the world for grief is work, and the necessity of work.

Biggest affirmative argument I know in favor of ‘If a man die, shall he live again?’ is just the way you feel inside you that nothin’ can stop you from livin’ on.