Maud Hart Lovelace Quotes

She tried to act as though it were nothing to go to the library alone. But her happiness betrayed her. Her smile could not be restrained, and it spread from her tightly pressed mouth, to her round cheeks, almost to the hair ribbons tied in perky bows over her ears.

It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.

After Commencement Day, the world!" Joe said. "With Betsy.

Come in early, so there'll be time to pop corn,' Mrs. Ray said. If she mentioned popping corn, they always came in early. So she usually mentioned it.

You have two numbers in your age when you are ten. It's the beginning of growing up.

You might as well learn right now, you two, that the poorest guide you can have in life is what people will say.

Say, you told me you thought Les Miserables was the greatest novel ever written. I think Vanity Fair is the greatest. Let's fight. - Joe Willard

Good things come, but they're never perfect; are they? You have to twist them into something perfect.

Muster your wits: stand in your own defense.

Betsy returned to her chair, took off her coat and hat, opened her book and forgot the world again.

The silence in the room had width, height, depth, mass and substance.

We'll just have to find more flowers in the spring. That's when they bloom, tra la.

This going around with boys makes me sick," said Tacy.
"I like Herbert Humphreys," said Tib.
It was just like Tib to like a boy and say so.
"Oh, if you have to have a boy around, it might as well be Herbert," said Betsy, who liked him too.
"He wears cute clothes," said Tacy, blushing.
Herbert Humphreys, who had come to Deep Valley from St. Paul, wore knickerbockers. The other boys in their grade wore plain short pants.

The wastes of snow on the hill were ghostly in the moonlight. The stars were piercingly bright.

What would life be like without her writing? Writing filled her life with beauty and mystery, gave it life ... and promise.

It looks like something out of Whittier's "Snowbound,"' Julia said. Julia could always think of things like that to say.

Our lives can hold just so much. If they're filled with one thing, they can't be filled with another. We ought to do a lot of thinking about what we want to fill them with.

Do you girls have hope chests?' Lloyd asked.
We certainly do.'
I don't,' said Betsy. 'My husband and I are going to use paper plates and napkins.'
Poor Joe!'
Lucky Larry!

Isn't it mysterious to begin a new journal like this? I can run my fingers through the fresh clean pages but I cannot guess what the writing on them will be.

Betsy liked to talk. Her father always said she got it from her mother, and her mother always said she got it from her father. But whomever she got it from she was certainly a talker.

Julia was as happy as Betsy was, almost. One nice thing about Julia was that she rejoiced in other people's luck.

There was nothing like a picnic! she reflected. If you were happy, it made you happier. If you were unhappy, it blew your troubles away.

The five-year-olds were the most important members of the large doll families. Everything pleasant happened to them. They had all the adventures.

But perhaps people who liked to write aways made lists! Just for the fun of it.

Was life always like that? she wondered. A game of hide and seek in which you only occasionally found the person you wanted to be?

And yet, even as she spoke, she knew that she did not wish to come back. not to stay, not to live. She loved the little yellow cottage more than she loved any place on earth. but she was through with it except in her memories.

Emily interrupted.
"Don," she said. "would you mind going home?"
He pulled his soft hat violently down over his forehead. "I suppose you think that I'm a cad."
"I just don't think about you. Good-by," Emily said, and closed the door firmly behind him.

One strain could call up the quivering expectancy of Christmas Eve, childhood, joy and sadness, the lonely wonder of a star

Sometimes the west showed clouds like tiny pink feathers; sometimes it showed purple mountains and green lakes; sometimes the clouds were scarlet with gold around the edges. Betsy

In silence the three of them looked at the sunset and thought about God.

New things are easier to do than old familiar things when there's going to be a change, Betsy decided profoundly.

Emily of a warm feeling of pleasure about the request to call.
Don had always just dropped in, indifferent to her convenience. Cab had only taken her to dances. There was a flattering formality, an indication of a genuine wish to get acquainted, about Jed Wakeman's overture. It gratified her.
The ungratifying though occurred that he might be coming just to talk about the Syrians.
"What makes me have ideas like that?" she asked herself. "There's a side of my nature that's always trying to pull me down - the way Don does. Well, I won't allow it! He asked to call because he likes me. And I like him. And I'm glad he's coming.

They soon stopped being ten years old. But whatever age they were seemed to be exactly the right age for having fun.

We're growing up," Betsy said aloud. She wasn't even sure she liked it. But it happened, and then it was irrevocable. There was nothing you could do about it except to try and see that you grew up into the kind of human being you wanted to be.
"I'd like to be a fine one," Betsy thought quickly and urgently.

Carney was hatless and gloveless, wearing her pink linen. Sam looked at her more than once.
"its just because he likes pink," she told herself.

You don't grow up, she reasoned now, until you begin to evaluate yourself, to recognize your good traits and acknowledge that you have a few faults.

She thought of the library, so shining white and new; the rows and rows of unread books; the bliss of unhurried sojourns there and of going out to a restaurant, alone, to eat.

People were always saying to Margaret, 'Well, Julia sings and Betsy writes. Now what is little Margaret going to do?' Margaret would smile politely, for she was very polite, but privately she stormed to Betsy with flashing eyes, 'I'm not going to do anything. I want to just live. Can't people just live?

I've got to stop thinking about myself so much
about how I look, how I'm impressing someone, whether I'm popular or not. I've got to start thinking about other people, all the people I meet.

They always ate and made tea on the alcohol lamp before going to bed. This was quite in the German tradition, Tilda said. Germans in their homes ate six meals a day: breakfast, second breakfast, dinner, afternoon coffee, supper and in the evening tea or beer with sandwiches and kuchen. Betsy, in the cherry-red bathrobe, and Tilda in a blue one, feasted merrily.

The most important part of religion isn't in any church. It's down in your own heart. Religion is in your thoughts, and in the way you act from day to day, in the way you treat other people. It's honesty, and unselfishness, and kindness. Especially kindness.

Sam!" cried Carney. "I'm afraid I lost the flashlight, but ... "
That was all she said for Sam took her in his arms. Holding her tightly he kissed her muddy face, not once but several times.

Betsy was so full of joy that she had to be alone. She went upstairs to her bedroom and sat down on Uncle Keith's trunk. Behind Tacy's house the sun had set. A wind had sprung up and the trees, their color dimmed, moved under a brooding sky. All the stories she had told Tacy and Tib seemed to be dancing in those trees, along with all the stories she planned to write some day and all the stories she would read at the library. Good stories. Great stories. The classics. Not Rena's novels.