Gladys Taber Quotes

Nothing makes a house cozier than cats.

Perhaps, after all, our best thoughts come when we are alone. It is good to listen, not to voices but to the wind blowing, to the brook running cool over polished stones, to bees drowsy with the weight of pollen. If we attend to the music of the earth, we reach serenity. And then, in some unexplained way, we share it with others.

I suppose I am a sparrow, a stay-at-home bird.

Happiness is a thing of now.

Well, any love makes us vulnerable. Whatever we love will give the gift of pain somewhere along the road. But who would live sealed in spiritual cellophane just to keep from ever being hurt? There are a few people like that. I'm sorry for them. I think they are as good as dead.

A good recipe for a human reducing breakfast is a lot of good things to eat, and three spaniels and two cats to eat with.

The creative instincts, the love force must be nourished with every beat of our hearts until they overbalance the destructive instincts.

History records the large events or the general condition of society, but only an individual can put down the way of life in a small town ...

When Father smiled, it was like the sun coming out, and spring and summer in your heart.

What would happen if all the populations on the planet simply refused to fight human beings they did not even know?

Indian summer comes gently, folds over the hills and valleys as softly as the fall of a leaf on a windless day. It is always unexpected. After a sharp cold spell, we wake one morning and look out and the very air is golden. The sky has a delicate dreamy color, and the yet unfallen leaves on the bravest trees have a secure look, as if they would never, never fall.

Traveling is all very well if you can get home at night. I would be willing to go around the world if I came back in time to light the candles and set the table for supper.

There is a kind of immortality in every garden.

My general attitude toward life when I first get up is of deep suspicion, verging on hatred ... I am simply basted together until after breakfast.

But housekeeping is fun. It is one job where you enjoy the results right along as you work. You may work all day washing and ironing, but at night you have the delicious feeling of sunny clean sheets and airy pillows to lie on. If you clean, you sit down at nightfall with the house shining and faintly smelling of wax, all yours to enjoy right then and there. And if you cook - that creation you lift from the oven goes right to the table.

Americans tend to believe they can do anything with or without any training or experience.

We need time to dream, time to remember, and time to reach the infinite. Time to be.

The tentacles of today reach out like an octopus to swallow yesterday.

Perhaps what makes friendship and love exciting is the continuing discovery of another personality.

When my own mother died, there seemed to me to be no answer to anything. For a time the only universality was death. And then I remember walking in the dusk along the quiet little street toward the house now so empty and meaningless. There was light enough from the sky to cast the lattice shadow of leaves on the walk. The sound of the river was steady and swift, and the air smelled of sulphur from the mills beyond it. As I looked up, a delicate petal of moon drifted into the tender blue, and all at once I thought, How beautiful God made the world! How wonderful that the stars still shine! And I was comforted.

Cat lovers know that every cat is remarkable.

I cannot imagine a cat in an Obedience ring, running around in the hot sun and doing things on command. For it would not make sense. Whereas a dog is tolerant of your not making sense and only wants to fix things so you are happy.

Dog lovers are a good breed themselves.

Some of the days in November carry the whole memory of summer as a fire opal carries the color of moonrise.

Catching something is merely a byproduct of our fishing. It is the act of fishing that wipes away all grief, lightens all worry, dissolves all fear and anxiety.

Happiness of heart can never be measured out and bundled up, it's intangible. We keep running after it, grasping for it, and the heat of our running so seldom brings it closer. But now and then there may be a moment. We look at something and know it is good and beautiful. Those moments are happiness.

Nothing decorates a home like books. There they are, waiting to decorate the mind, too!

It is Jill's theory that in every life there is one dog.Other dogs may come and go, but there is one grande affaire. I feel that is probably right and yet it worries me, for it might mean that I am a fickle person. For I seem able to love deeply just the dog I am looking at.

Business was bound to come; light industries were already shopping for land. The quiet country farms were already going, and developments would take over ... Eventually, of course, we will have to have some sort of plan to guide future development.

Old houses, I thought, do not belong to people ever, not really, people belong to them.

Father was the most unreconciled taxpayer I ever knew.

Best of all are the decorations the grandchildren have made ~ fat little stars and rather crooked Santas, shaped out of dough and baked in the oven.

Being a good neighbor is an art which makes life richer.

The real evidence of growing older is that things level off in importance ... Days are no longer jagged peaks to climb; time is a meadow, and we move over it with level steps.

Almost all words do have color, and nothing is more pleasant than to utter a pink word and see someone's eyes light up and know it is a pink word for him or her, too.

November wind has a sound different from any other. It is easy to imagine the cave of the winds in some mythical Northland where the winds are born and the gods send them out to conquer the quiet air.

The begonia is an amazing plant ... it just keeps going along and blooming, and when cut back, it starts up again.

A house with no fireplace is a house without a heart.

The curious thing about fishing is you never want to go home. If you catch something, you can't stop. If you don't catch anything, you hate to leave in case something might bite.

June in New England is like a lover's dream made tangible.

Whoever decided that comic valentines were a good idea should have been sent away to think it over.

Christmas is a kindling of new fires.