Quotes by Rachel Field

“I used to think I had ambition... but now Im not so sure. It may have been only discontent. Theyre easily confused.”

“Ive seen public opinion shift like the wind and put out the very fire it lighted.”

“The public is more easily swayed by persons than by principles.”

“There was no reality to pain when it left one, thought while it held one fast all other realities failed.”

“Theres plenty of fire in the coldest flint!”

“Too much good fortune can make you smug and unaware. Happiness should be like an oasis, the greener for the desert that surrounds it.”

“One of the pleasantest things about book writing is that sometimes it brings one in touch with old friends.”

The more one suffered and lived, the more one had known of joy and grief, the deeper the response must be if an artist were great enough to summon it.

Oh, well, it might look like a patterned world, laid out in prim design, but to those living there it could never be so simple. They were as alive as she: that old peasant contriving to outwit the cold; that woman anxiously counting her comical flock lest one goose escape her vigilance; all those who slept, or toiled, or loved under the low-hung roofs or the sharp turrets. Those people out there, if they caught sight of her own face pressed close to the window pane, might be speculating about her. To them she was part of the pattern of the lumbering train with its trail of smoke and little boxlike carriages. Perhaps they envied her, riding at ease to distant Paris. How little they knew of that! How little she herself know what awaited her at the end of the journey!

The sight of a cage is only frightening to the bird that has once been caught.

Too much good fortune can make you smug and unaware. Happiness should be like an oasis, the greener for the desert that surrounds it.