Van Reid > Quotes

“He's been given the boot!' Lofton insisted, directing his anger now at Mister Walton. 'And I think it wise not to interfere!'
'I don't like to benefit from another's misfortune,' said Mister Walton with a straight face, and never losing his peaceful demeanor. ' But the hotel's loss, in this case, is my gain, I fear.'
'Mr. Hubbard will be gravely offended!' said Lofton darkly.
'I can't imagine it,' quipped the bespectacled fellow. 'Only small people are easily offended.'
Lofton, who until now had done his best to appear offended, found himself at a loss for a response.”
― Van Reid, Cordelia Underwood: Or, The Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

“Now, it is a verifiable actuality that any two men can talk politely and even become friends, given the chance; but put them in different uniforms, or train them in the use of different tools or philosophies or shaving soap, and you will have two men who are sure that the other lives primarily to contradict him. I did know a fellow once who insisted that reasonable men can disagree, but somebody knocked him cold with a cast-iron frying pan just then and I never did hear the remainder of his hypothesis.”
― Van Reid, Cordelia Underwood: Or, The Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

“Now, there is a great deal of difference between a person who requires assistance or looks to be served, and one who is needy. The average person meets his or her fellow on more or less equal ground; needy individuals imagine their demands to be broadcast from a position of height, when in fact anyone coming to their aid usually views them as lacking in either intelligence or ambition—possibly both. The needy person, becoming a needy customer, is often the first to be waited upon and probably the first to be despised. Grace habitually emanated such weary neediness; she would ask the price of an object without first scrutinizing the tag hanging from it. “I”
― Van Reid, Cordelia Underwood: or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League