Quotes by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

Now everybody who knows anything at all knows perfectly well that even a business letter does not deserve the paper on which it is written unless it contains at least one significant phrase that is worth waking up in the night to remember and think about.

Supplementing the far, remote Glory-of-God expression in his face, the glory-of-doughnuts shone suddenly very warmly.

And while you and the rest of your kind are battling together—year after year—for this special privilege of being bored to death, the real girl that youre asking about, the marvelous girl, the girl with the big, beautiful, unspoken thoughts in her head, the girl with the big, brave, undone deeds in her heart, the girl that stories are made of, the girl whom you call improbable—is moping off alone in some dark, cold corner—or sitting forlornly partnerless against the bleak wall of the ballroom—or hiding shyly up in the dressing-room—waiting to be discovered!

If Beauty is excuse enough for Being, it sure takes Plainness then to feel the real necessity for—Doing.

As far as I can reckon, a woman can stand absolutely anything under Gods heaven that she knows; but she just up and cant stand the littlest, teeniest, no-account sort of thing that she aint sure of. Answers may kill em dead enough, but its questions that eats em alive.

Why, Ive been all over the world, I tell you, and fairly loafed and lolled in every conceivable sort of ease and luxury, but the Soul of me—the wild, restless, breathless, discontented soul of me—never sat down before in all its life—I say, until my frightened hand cuddled into his broken one. I tell you I dont pretend to explain it, I dont pretend to account for it; all I know is—that smothering there under all that horrible wreckage and everything—the instant my hand went home to his, the most absolute sense of serenity and contentment went over me.

Then Night came down like the feathery soot of a smoky lamp, and smutted[9] first the bedquilt, then the hearth-rug, then the window-seat, and then at last the great, stormy, faraway outside world. But sleep did not come. Oh, no! Nothing new came at all except that particularly wretched, itching type of insomnia which seems to rip away from ones body the whole kind, protecting skin and expose all the raw, ticklish fretwork of nerves to the mercy of a gritty blanket or a wrinkled sheet. Pain came too, in its most brutally high night-tide; and sweat, like the smother of furs in summer; and thirst like the scrape of hot sand-paper; and chill like the clammy horror of raw fish.

Provide for her Future—if you can!—Thats my motto!—But a mans just a plain bum who dont provide for his own Past!

If theres—one person on the face of this earth who makes me sick its the ninny who calls a thing improbable because it happens to be outside his own special, puny experience of life.

Incidentally her head ached and her shoulders ached and her lungs ached and the ankle-bones of both feet ached quite excruciatingly. But nothing of her felt permanently incapacitated except her noble expression. Like a strip of lip-colored lead suspended from her poor little nose by two tugging wire-gray wrinkles her persistently conscientious sickroom smile seemed to be whanging aimlessly against her front teeth. The sensation certainly was very unpleasant.

I wish I could have lived just one day when the world was new. I wish—I wish I could have reaped just one single, solitary, big Emotion before the world had caught it and—appraised it—and taxed it—and licensed it—and staled it!

You dont seem to understand, I whispered. Its Christmas relationships that are worrying Carol and me so! It worries us dreadfully! Oh, of course we understand all about the Little Baby Christ! And the camels! And the wise men! And the frankincense! Thats easy! But who is Santa Claus? Unless—unless—? It was Carol himself who signaled me to go on. Unless—hes the Baby Christs grandfather? I thought Derry Willard looked a little bit startled. Carols ears turned bright red. Oh, of course—we meant on his mothers side! I hastened to assure him.