D.E. Stevenson > Quotes

“There are adventures of the spirit and one can travel in books and interest oneself in people and affairs. One need never be dull as long as one has friends to help, gardens to enjoy and books in the long winter evenings.”
― D. E. Stevenson, Listening Valley

“...some people might think our lives dull and uneventful, but it does not seem so to us. ...it is not travel and adventure that make a full life. There are adventures of the spirit and one can travel in books and interest oneself in people and affairs. One need ever be dull as long as one has friends to help, gardens to enjoy and books in the long winter evenings.”
― Dorothy Emily Stevenson, Listening Valley

“In a new friend we start life anew, for we create a new edition of ourselves and so become,for the time being, a new creature.”
― D E Stevenson

“She saw beauty in ordinary little things and took pleasure in it (and this was just as well because she had had very little pleasure in her life). She took pleasure in a well-made cake, a smoothly ironed napkin, a pretty blouse, laundered and pressed; she liked to see the garden well dug, the rich soil brown and gravid; she loved her flowers. When you are young you are too busy with yourself... you haven't time for ordinary little things but, when you leave youth behind, your eyes open and you see magic and mystery all around you: magic in the flight of a bird, the shape of a leaf, the bold arch of a bridge against the sky, footsteps at night and a voice calling in the darkness, the moment in a theatre before the curtain rises, the wind in the trees, or (in winter) an apple-branch clothed with pure white snow and icicles hanging from from a stone and sparkling with rainbow colours.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Vittoria Cottage

“What fools the public were! They were exactly like sheep…thought Mr. Abbott sleepily…following each other’s lead, neglecting one book and buying another just because other people were buying it, although, for the life of you, you couldn’t see what the one lacked and the other possessed.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Miss Buncle's Book

“Friends that you have known for a long time and love very dearly never seem to grow old.”
― D.E. Stevenson, The Young Clementina

“Most people, looking back at their childhood, see it as a misty country half-forgotten or only to be remembered through an evocative sound or scent, but some episodes of those short years remain clear and brightly coloured like a landscape seen through the wrong end of a telescope.”
― D. E. Stevenson, Listening Valley

“Some people’s elegance was only skin-deep, scrape off a little bit of the veneer and you got the real wood—common”
― D.E. Stevenson, Miss Buncle's Book

“Books are people,'' smiled Miss Marks. ''In every book worth reading, the author is there to meet you, to establish contact with you. He takes you into his confidence and reveals his thoughts to you.”
― D.E. Stevenson

“It was just the old house creaking in the wind, and talking to itself about all it had seen, and the big cheerful families which it had sheltered and sent forth into the world.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Miss Buncle's Book

“It is curious but true that those who make a habit of saying unkind things are often the most easily hurt and offended when their victims retaliate.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Music in the Hills

“The best way to plant happiness is to do at least one thing every day to make one person happier, and to do it for God. That shouldn't be difficult. we can all do that.”
― D.E. Stevenson, The Four Graces

“Do you ever have days like that when nothing can go wrong? And then there are the days when can go right, Paula continued. When your hair won't lie down properly, and your stockings develop ladders at the worst possible moment, or your suspender breaks, and buttons fly off your gloves. When you say the wrong things to the wrong people, and spill coffee on your favorite frock, and break your reading glasses, and your cook asks for a raise - you know the kind of thing I mean, said Paula.”
― D.E. Stevenson, The Young Clementina

“Jerry took a large slice of wheaten bread, spread with golden butter, and bit into it with her small white teeth. It was a natural gesture - she was very hungry indeed - but to Sam, there was something symbolic about it. Jerry was like bread, he thought. She was like good wholesome wheaten bread, spread thick with honest farm butter; and the thought crossed his mind, that a man might eat bread forever and ever, and not tire of it, and it would never clog his palate like sweet cakes or pastries or chocolate éclairs. ”
― D.E. Stevenson, Miss Buncle Married

“Some people travel all over the world and see nothing. They go about clad in a thick fog of their own making through which no impressions can penetrate.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“Few of us have the necessary unselfishness to hear with gladness the talents of others extolled or to listen with patience to the successes of those whom we despise.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Miss Buncle's Book

“It is curious, isn’t it, that things you know well never look dirty and dilapidated—other people’s old furniture looks shabby and moth-eaten. “I would never have that horrible old couch in my room,” you say. But your own old couch is every bit as bad and you are not disgusted with its appearance; it is your friend, you see, and you remember it when it was new and smart. Friends that you have known for a long time and love very dearly never seem to grow old.”
― D.E. Stevenson, The Young Clementina

“In a new friend we start life anew, for we create a new edition of ourselves and so become, for the time being, a new creature.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Miss Buncle Married

“The strangest thing in all man’s travelling is that he should carry about with him incongruous memories. There is no foreign land; it is the traveller only who is foreign, and now and then, by a flash of recollection, lights up the contrasts of the earth.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Mrs Tim of the Regiment

“I can take a book in my hands and voyage across the world. China, Burma, Jamaica—the very sound of the words is an enchantment bringing me sights and sounds, and odors that my senses have never savored.”
― D.E. Stevenson, The Young Clementina

“Poverty is easy to bear if it is only temporary, easier still if it is an entirely voluntary burden.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Miss Buncle's Book

“People are apt to take you at your own valuation . . . I mean if you lie down on the floor and look like a doormat people can't be blamed for wiping their boots on you.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Celia's House

“Barbara returned the pressure. “It’s turned out all right after all,” she said contentedly. “Things usually do, somehow. You worry and fuss and try to make things go the way you think they should, and then you find that the other way was best. I’m going to try not to worry about things anymore.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Miss Buncle Married

“Nell wagged her feathery tail. It was good when the goddess descended from the clouds and spoke to you; it gave you a cozy safe feeling in your inside.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Miss Buncle's Book

“A fat, stolid young man came forward to serve us. "A drinking trough for a dog. Yes, Moddam. Would you prefer a plain trough or one with 'dog' written on it?"
Paula looked at him gravely. "It doesn't really matter," she replied. "My dogs can't read and my husband never drinks water.”
― D.E. Stevenson, The Young Clementina

“You still miss her?"

"Yes, I still miss her frightfully. It's two years since she died, but I haven't got used to doing without her. I still keep on wanting to tell her things."

"I know the feeling," said Louise. "I miss Mummy like that. It comes and goes. Sometimes I forget about it—and then the tide rises and I'm almost drowned. It happens quite suddenly—I never know when it's going to happen.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Bel Lamington

“By this time Miss Lamington knew a good deal about her “boss”. She knew that he was thirty-six (which was “quite old” in her estimation); he lived with his mother at Beckenham and travelled to the office every day”
― D.E. Stevenson, Bel Lamington

“There are very few people in the world with courage enough to admit that they do not care for music (dogs and children come into the same category) and so brand themselves forever as Philistines in the eyes of their friends.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Miss Buncle Married

“Don't you worry. It doesn't do no good worrying over things—just sail in.”
― D.E. Stevenson, The Young Clementina

“There were pretty carpets, good china, and an abundance of excellent food; there were magazines and papers and books lying about, and boxes of cigarettes for anyone who wanted them … there was all this, but above all there was peace. Peace, thought Franz, peace and happiness—yes, that was really the keynote of Fernacres.”
― D.E. Stevenson, The English Air