Great Throughts Treasury

"The test of beauty is whether it can survive close knowledge."

"It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed but not bought. It may be used, but not owned. It gives itself in response to love and tending, offers its seasonal flowering and fruiting. But we are tenants and not possessors, lovers and not masters."

"Madness is only a variety of mental nonconformity and we are all individualists here."

"A pie so delicate, so luscious, that I hope to be propped up on my dying bed and fed a generous portion. Then I think that I should refuse outright to die, for life would be too good to relinquish."

"A part of the placidity of the South comes from the sense of well-being that follows the heart-and-body-warming consumption of breads fresh from the oven. We serve cold baker's bread to our enemies, trusting that they will never impose on our hospitality again."

"A queer thing happens to me whenever I am all through with one piece of work, and I have wondered if it was common to all writers. Before I go to work on something else, I drop into the most terrific despair. It has always been so ? Then when the new work takes hold of my mind, nothing exists but the necessity for working it out."

"A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life, to be thankful for a good one."

"A woman never forgets the men she could have had; a man, the women he couldn?t."

"Good is what helps us or at least does not hinder. Evil is whatever harms us or interferes with us, according to our own selfish standards."

"Don't go gittin faintified on me."

"He was addled with April. He was dizzy with Spring. He was as drunk as Lem Forrester on a Saturday night."

"Eulalie in a remote fashion belonged to him, Jody, to do with as he pleased, if only to throw potatoes at her."

"He who tries to forget a woman, never loved her."

"I do not understand how anyone can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to."

"I can only tell you that when long soul-searching and a combination of circumstances delivered me of my last prejudices, there was an exalted sense of liberation. It was not the Negro who became free, but I."

"I get as much satisfaction from preparing a perfect dinner for a few good friends as from turning out a perfect paragraph in my writing."

"He wrote: Dear ollever; yor ol twinkk has dun gode up the rivver. im gladd. yor friend jody. ? Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling"

"If there can be such a thing as instinctual memory, the consciousness of land and water must lie deeper in the core of us than any knowledge of our fellow beings. We were bred of the earth before we were born of our mothers. Once born, we can live without our mothers or our fathers or any other kin or friend, or even human love. We cannot live without the earth or apart from it, and something is shriveled in man?s heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men."

"Jody said, Ma, you're shore good.Oh, yes. When it's rations.Well, I'd a heap ruther you was good about rations and mean about other things.Oh, I be mean, be I?Only about jest a very few things, he soothed her. ? Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling"

"No man should have proprietary rights over land who does not use that land wisely and lovingly."

"Now he understood. This was death. Death was a silence that gave back no answer."

"Somewhere beyond the sink-hole, past the magnolia, under the live oaks, a boy and a yearling ran side by side, and were gone forever."

"Sift each of us through the great sieve of circumstance and you have a residue, great or small as the case may be, that is the man or the woman."

"Sorrow was like the wind. It came in gusts."

"The human mind messing interests as if they were of fluff thorns, all raised by the wind and driven"

"The individual man is transitory, but the pulse of life and of growth goes on after he is gone, buried under a wreath of magnolia leaves."

"We cannot live without the Earth or apart from it, and something is shriveled in a man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men"

"We were bred of earth before we were bred of our mothers. Once born, we can live without mother or father, or any other kin, or any friend, or any human love. We cannot live without the earth or apart from it, and something is shriveled in a man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men."

"They listened with flattering attention. He was filled with enthusiasm. He began at the beginning and tried to tell it as he thought Penny would do. Half-way through, he looked down at the cake. He lost interest in the account. Then Pa shot him, he ended abruptly."

"This, then, was hunger. This was what his mother had meant when she had said, We'll all go hongry. He had laughed, for he had thought he had known hunger, and it was faintly pleasant. He knew now that it had been only appetite. This was another thing."

"We need above all, I think, a certain remoteness from urban confusion."

"We never run from conditions and circumstances but from ourselves, as Wolfe did, so that actually we make no escape. But there are times when it doesn?t hurt to yield a bit, as long as we are not deceiving ourselves too greatly."

"When a wave of love takes over a human being... such an exaltation takes him that he knows he has put his finger on the pulse of the great secret and the great answer."

"Who owns Cross Creek? The red-birds, I think, more than I, for they will have their nests even in the face of delinquent mortgages. It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed, but not bought. It may be used, but not owned. It gives itself in response to love and tending, offers its seasonal flowering and fruiting. But we are tenants and not possessors, lovers, and not masters. Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time..."

"Writing is agony for me. I work at it eight hours every day, hoping to get six pages, but I am satisfied with three."

"Women always worry about the things that men forget; men always worry about the things women remember."

"Writing is agony. I stay at my typewriter for eight hours every day when I?m working and keep as free as possible from all distractions for the rest of the day. I aim to do six pages a day but I?m satisfied with three. Often there are only a few lines to show."

"You do somethin' for me? Go tell Twink I'll meet her at the old grove Tuesday about dusk-dark.Jody was frozen. He burst out, I won't do it. I hate her. Ol' yellow-headed somethin'."

"You know what I wisht I had, Ma? A pouch like a 'possum, to tote things."

"You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks...Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life...I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on."