Top 83 Jean Webster Quotes
#1. I don't know why I am in such a reminiscent mood except that spring and the reappearance of toads always awakens the old acquisitive instinct. The only thing that keeps me from starting a collection is the fact that no rule exists against it.
Jean Webster
#2. so you must be as punctilious in sending them as though it were a bill that you were paying. I hope that they will always be respectful in tone and will reflect credit on your training.
Jean Webster
#3. Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
You never answered my question and it was very important.
ARE YOU BALD?
Jean Webster
#4. The feeling often comes over me that I am not at all remarkable; it is fun to plan a career, but in all probability I shan't turn out a bit different from any other ordinary person.
Jean Webster
#5. You must remember that you cannot form your character in a moment, my dear. Character is a plant of slow growth and the seeds must be planted early.
Jean Webster
#7. I'm a foreigner in the world and I don't understand the language. It's a miserable feeling. I've had it all my life. At the high school the girls would stand in groups and just look at me. I was queer and different and everybody knew it.
Jean Webster
#8. Half of the time I don't know what they're talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that everyone but me has shared. I'm a foreigner in the world and I don't understand the language.
Jean Webster
#9. Her eyes wandered back to the campus again, and she suddenly grew sober as the thought swept over her that in a few weeks more it would be hers no longer. This happy, irresponsible community life, which had come to be the only natural way of living, was suddenly at an end.
Jean Webster
#10. You mustn't get me used to too many luxuries. One doesn't miss what one has never had; but it's awfully hard going without things after one has commenced thinking they are his.
Jean Webster
#11. It makes me almost hope I'm not a genius; they must be very wearying to have about - and awfully destructive to the furniture.
Jean Webster
#12. I have been thinking about you a great deal this summer; having somebody take an interest in me after all these years makes me feel as though I had found a sort of family. It seems as though I belonged to somebody now, and it's a very comfortable sensation.
Jean Webster
#13. The awful thing about a vacation is that the moment it begins your happiness is already clouded by its approaching end.
Jean Webster
#14. We belong to each other now really and truly, no make-believe. Doesn't it seem queer for me to belong to someone at last? It seems very, very sweet. And I shall never let you be sorry for a single instant.
Yours, for ever and ever,
Judy
Jean Webster
#15. I've been hearing about Shakespeare all my life, but I had no idea he really wrote so well; I always suspected him of going largely on his reputation.
Jean Webster
#16. Good manners are not merely snobbish ornaments, as Mrs. Lippett's regime appeared to believe. They mean self-discipline and thought for others, and my children have got to learn them.
Jean Webster
#17. Just such a letter as you would write to your parents if they were living. 'These
Jean Webster
#18. That is the way Connecticut goes, in a series of Marcelle waves; and Lock Willow Farm is just on the crest of one wave. The barns used to be across the road where they obstructed the view, but a kind flash of lightning came from heaven and burnt them down.
Jean Webster
#19. It's dreadful when two people's senses of humor are antagonistic. I don't believe there's any bridging that gulf!
Jean Webster
#20. Examinations are even entertaining, if you know the right answers.
Jean Webster
#21. The way people are forever rolling their eyes to heaven and saying: "Perhaps it's all for the best," when they are perfectly dead sure it's not, makes me enraged. Humility or resignation or whatever you choose to call it, is simply impotent inertia. I'm for a more militant religion!
Jean Webster
#22. think that every one, no matter how many troubles he may have when he grows up, ought to have a happy childhood to look back upon.
Jean Webster
#23. It's nice to look forward to, isn't it - a life of work and play and little daily adventures side by side with somebody you love?
Jean Webster
#24. This new book is going to get itself finished - and published! You see if it doesn't.
Jean Webster
#25. Youth has nothing to do with birthdays, only with ALIVEDNESS of spirit, so even if your hair is grey, Daddy, you can still be a boy.
Jean Webster
#26. The world is full of happiness, and plenty to go round, if you are only willing to take the kind that comes your way.
Jean Webster
#27. It's much more entertaining to live books than to write them.
Jean Webster
#28. Where do you think my new novel is? In the waste basket. I can see myself that it's no good on earth, and when a loving author realizes this, what would be the judgment of a critical public?
Jean Webster
#29. I believe absolutely in my own free will and my own power to accomplish - and that is the belief that moves mountains.
Jean Webster
#31. True it is that troubles niver come single, they're married an' has children.
Jean Webster
#32. That is - you are not to thank him for the money; he doesn't care to have that mentioned, but you are to write a letter telling of the progress in your studies and the details of your daily life.
Jean Webster
#33. But Julia hasn't a bit of tact; and men, I find, require a great deal. They purr if you rub them the right way and spit if you don't. (That isn't a very elegant metaphor. I mean it figuratively.)
Jean Webster
#34. But you won't mind, will you, if I tell you that I have a very much more special feeling for another man? You can probably guess without much trouble who he is. I suspect that my letters have been very full of Master Jervie for a very long time. I
Jean Webster
#35. Julia and Sallie and I all had new dresses. Do you want to hear about them? Julia's was cream satin and gold embroidery and she wore purple orchids. It was a DREAM and came from Paris, and cost a million dollars. Sallie's
Jean Webster
#36. Oh, of course, if a man keeps his soul in a bandbox he can produce it immaculate in the end; but what's a soul for if it's not for use? He would much better live in the world with his fellow-men, and help them keep their souls clean, even at the risk of getting his own a little dusty.
Jean Webster
#37. Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh - I really think that requires SPIRIT.
Jean Webster
#39. Where is the fun of living if you are going to make yourself a slave to all sorts of petty rules? asked Patty wearily.
Jean Webster
#40. you just want a thing hard enough and keep on trying, you do get it in the end.
Jean Webster
#41. Eleven pages - this is a letter! Have courage. I'm going to stop.
Jean Webster
#42. when we women get our rights, you men will have to look alive in order to keep yours.
Jean Webster
#43. It seems to me that a man who can think straight along for forty-seven years without changing a single idea ought to be kept in a cabinet as a curiosity.
Jean Webster
#45. I saw a street car conductor today with one brown eye and one blue. Wouldn't he make a nice villain for a detective story?
Jean Webster
#46. It is funny how certain places get connected with certain people, and you never go back without thinking of them.
Jean Webster
#47. I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other people's places. It makes them kind and sympathetic and understanding.
Jean Webster
#48. Do you want to know something? I have three pairs of kid gloves. I've had kid mittens before from the Christmas tree, but never real kid gloves with five fingers. I take them out and try them on every little while. It's all I can do not to wear them to classes.
Jean Webster
#49. But what's the use of arguing with a man? You belong, Mr. Smith, to a sex devoid of a sense of logic. To bring a man into line, there are just two methods: one must either coax or be disagreeable. I scorn to coax men for what I wish. Therefore, I must be disagreeable.
Jean Webster
#50. It's a relief not having to thank Somebody for every mouthful you eat. (I dare say I'm blasphemous; but you'd be, too, if you'd offered as much obligatory thanks as I have.)
Jean Webster
#51. She never lets ideas interrupt the easy flow of her conversation.
Jean Webster
#52. He has gone and we are missing him ! When you get accustomed to people or places or ways of living, and then have them snatched away, it does leave an empty, gnawing sort of sensation.
Jean Webster
#53. If this book should ever roam, Box its ears and send it home.
Jean Webster
#54. Perhaps when two people are exactly in accord, and always happy when together and lonely when apart, they ought not to let anything in the world stand between them.
Jean Webster
#55. The room marked with a cross is not where the murder was committed, but the one that I occupy.
Jean Webster
#56. I don't believe it pays to be a great author.
Jean Webster
#57. It's the one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. (That isn't original. I got it out of one of Shakespeare's plays). However,
Jean Webster
#58. The Letters of Miss Jerusha Abbott to Mr. Daddy-Long-Legs Smith 215
Jean Webster
#59. I think that every one , no matter how many troubles the may have when he grows up, ought to have a happy childhood to look back upon. And if I ever have any children of my own, no matter how unhappy I may be, I am not going to let them have any cares until they grow up.
Jean Webster
#60. This is your heart. Keep it locked until the chap turns up who has the key.
Jean Webster
#61. I like to pretend that you belong to me, just to play with the idea, but of course I know you don't. I'm alone, really
with my back to the wall fighting the world
and I get sort of gaspy when I think about it. I put it out of my mind, and keep on pretending; but don't you see, Daddy?
Jean Webster
#62. Thank heaven I don't inherit God from anybody! I am free to make mine up as I wish Him. He's kind and sympathetic and imaginative and forgiving and understanding - and He has a sense of humor.
Jean Webster
#63. Her mother was a Rutherford. The family came over in the ark, and were connected by marriage with Henry the VIII. On her father's side they date back further than Adam. On the topmost branches of her family tree there's a superior breed of monkeys with very fine silky hair and extra long tails.
Jean Webster
#64. Be careful not to keep your eyes glued to detail. Stand far enough away to get a perspective of the whole.
Jean Webster
#65. They are so accustomed to the feeling that their senses are deadened to it;
Jean Webster
#66. The mere idea that you are not in a place for the rest of your life gives you an awfully unstable feeling. That's why trial marriages would never work. You've got to feel you're in a thing irrevocably and forever in order to buckle down and really put your whole mind into making it a success.
Jean Webster
#67. You should see the way this college is studying!
Jean Webster
#68. I have a terrible wanderthirst; the very sight of a map makes me want to put on my hat and take an umbrella and start. I
shall see before I die the palms and temples of the South.
Jean Webster
#70. It isn't the big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones.
Jean Webster
#71. The only explanation I can think of is that he is insane, and there are so many insane people in the world that it isn't even interesting.
Jean Webster
#72. You know that I've always had a very special feeling towards you; you
Jean Webster
#73. In the country, especially, there are such a lot of entertaining things. I can walk over everybody's land, and look at everybody's view, and dabble in everybody's brook; and enjoy it just as much as though I owned the land
and with no taxes to pay!
Jean Webster
#74. The more I study men, the more I realize that they are nothing in the world but boys grown too big to be spankable.
Jean Webster
#75. I came up with a pen and tablet hoping to write an immortal short story, but I've been having a dreadful time with my heroine - I CAN'T make her behave as I want her to behave; so I've abandoned her for the moment, and am writing to you.
Jean Webster
#76. It seemed like an unachievable goal for one person to bring sunshine to one hundred little faces when what they need is a mother apiece.
Jean Webster
#77. You know, Daddy, I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other people's places. It makes them kind and sympathetic and understanding. It ought to be cultivated in children.
Jean Webster
#78. Getting an education is an awfully wearing process!
Jean Webster
#79. See marriage as a man must, a good, sensible workaday institution; but awfully curbing to one's liberty. Somehow, after you're married forever, life has lost its feeling of adventure. There aren't any romantic possibilities waiting to surprise you around each corner.
Jean Webster
#80. She was worshiping under the blue sky, to the jubilant chanting of the birds.
Jean Webster
#81. Aren't men funny? When they want to pay you the greatest compliment in their power, they naively tell you that you have a masculine mind. There is one compliment, incidentally, that I shall never be paying him. I cannot honestly say that he has a quickness of perception almost feminine.
Jean Webster
#82. Please be thinking about me. I'm quite lonely and I want to be thought about
Jean Webster
#83. The Lord has given you two hands and a brain and a big world to use them in. Use them well, and you will be provided for; use them ill, and you will want,
Jean Webster
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