Kate Douglas Wiggin > Quotes

“Nothing but writing rests me; only then do I seem completely myself!”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin

“There is a kind of magicness about going far away and then coming back all changed.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, New Chronicles of Rebecca

“The soul grows into lovely habits as easily as into ugly ones, and the moment a life begins to blossom into beautiful words and deeds, that moment a new standard of conduct is established, and your eager neighbors look to you for a continuous manifestation of the good cheer, the sympathy, the ready wit, the comradeship, or the inspiration, you once showed yourself capable of. Bear figs for a season or two, and the world outside the orchard is very unwilling you should bear thistles.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers, and sisters, aunts and cousins, but only one mother in the whole world.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin

“It is very funny, but you do not always have to see people to love them. Just think about it, and see if it isn't so.”
― Kate Wiggin, The Birds' Christmas Carol: Great for Holiday and Christmas Reading or Gifting

“Miranda Sawyer had a heart, of course, but she had never used it for any other purpose than the pumping and circulating of blood.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“There are certain narrow, umimaginative, and autocratic old people who seem to call out the most mischievous and sometimes the worst traits in children.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World,
With the wonderful water round you curled,
And the wonderful grass upon your breast,
World, you are beautifully drest!”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“You seem to have an uncommon knowledge of young people. May I ask if you are, or have been, a teacher?" "Oh, no!" Mrs. Carey remarked with a smile, "I am just a mother,--that's all! Good night.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Mother Carey's Chickens

“Oh, Kathleen!" sighed Nancy as the two went into the kitchen together. "Isn't mother the most interesting 'scolder' you ever listened to? I love to hear her do it, especially when somebody else is getting it. When it's I, I grow smaller and smaller, curling myself up like a little worm. Then when she has finished I squirm to the door and wriggle out. Other mothers say: 'If you don't, I shall tell your father!' 'Do as I tell you, and ask no questions.' 'I never heard of such behavior in my life!' 'Haven't you any sense of propriety?' 'If this happens again I shall have to do something desperate.' 'Leave the room at once,' and so on; but mother sets you to thinking."

"Mother doesn't really scold," Kathleen objected.

"No, but she shows you how wrong you are, just the same...”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Mother Carey's Chickens

“A real Christmas baby was not to be lightly named.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, The Birds' Christmas Carol

“We'll never speak of 'last times,' Gilly, or where would any of us be? We'll always think of 'next' times. I shall trust Nancy next time, and next time and next time, and keep on trusting till I can trust her forever!”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Mother Carey's Chickens

“As a matter of fact it required only a tolerable show of virtue for Peter to win encomiums at any time. He would brush his curly mop of hair away from his forehead, lift his eyes, part his lips, showing a row of tiny white teeth; then a dimple would appear in each cheek and a seraphic expression (wholly at variance with the facts) would overspread the baby face, whereupon the beholder...would cry "Angel boy!" and kiss him. He was even kissed now, though he had done nothing at all but exist and be an enchanting personage, which is one of the injustices of a world where a large number of virtuous and well-behaved people go unkissed to their graves!”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Mother Carey's Chickens

“No whimpering, madam! You can't have the joys of motherhood without some of its pangs! Think of your blessings, and don't be a coward!—”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Mother Carey's Chickens

“Please drop a note to the clerk of the weather, and have a good, rousing snow-storm -- say on the twenty-second. None of your meek, gentle, nonsensical, shilly-shallying snow-storms; not the sort where the flakes float lazily down from the sky as if they didn't care whether they ever got here or not, and then melt away as soon as they touch the earth, but a regular business-like whizzing, whirring, blurring, cutting snow-storm, warranted to freeze and stay on! ”
― Kate Wiggin, The Birds' Christmas Carol: Great for Holiday and Christmas Reading or Gifting

“It would be false to say that one could ever be alone when one has one's lovely thoughts to comfort one.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“[Julia Carey] had never, even when very young, experienced a desire to sit at the feet of superior wisdom, always greatly preferring a chair of her own. She seldom did wrong, in her own opinion, because the moment she entertained an idea it at once became right, her vanity serving as a pair of blinders to keep her from seeing the truth.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Mother Carey's Chickens

“To let blessed babies go dangling and dawdling without names, for months and months, was enough to ruin them for life.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, The Birds' Christmas Carol

“Hugh refused to leave the scene of the action. He seated himself on the top stair in the hall, banged his head against the railing a few times, just by way of uncorking the vials of his wrath, and then subsided into gloomy silence, waiting to declare war if more “first girl babies” were thrust upon a family already surfeited with that unnecessary article.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, The Birds' Christmas Carol

“Look at the pebbles in the bottom of the pool, Miss Emily, so round and smooth and shining." "Yes, but where did they get that beautiful polish, that satin skin, that lovely shape, Rebecca? Not in the still pool lying on the sands. It was never there that their angles were rubbed off and their rough surfaces polished, but in the strife and warfare of running waters. They have jostled against other pebbles, dashed against sharp rocks, and now we look at them and call them beautiful.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“  "And all the bars at which we fret,   That seem to prison and control,   Are but the doors of daring set   Ajar before the soul.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Mother Carey's Chickens

“It is very funny, but you do not always have to see people to love them. Just think about it, and tell me if it isn't so.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, The Birds' Christmas Carol

“The girl's eyes were soft and tender and the heart within her stretched a little and grew; grew in sweetness and intuition and depth of feeling. It had looked into another heart, felt it beat, and heard it sigh; and that is how all hearts grow.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“The brimming glass that overflows its own rim moistens the earth about it.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“she was fairly good at any kind of housework not demanding brains. Nobody could say why some of Ossian Popham's gifts of mind and conversation had not descended to his children, but though the son was not really stupid at practical work, Lallie Joy was in a perpetual state of coma.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Mother Carey's Chickens

“Rebecca's eyes were like faith,—"the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Under her delicately etched brows they glowed like two stars, their dancing lights half hidden in lustrous darkness. Their glance was eager and full of interest, yet never satisfied; their steadfast gaze was brilliant and mysterious, and had the effect of looking directly through the obvious to something beyond, in the object, in the landscape, in you. They had never been accounted for, Rebecca's eyes. The school teacher and the minister at Temperance had tried and failed; the young artist who came for the summer to sketch the red barn, the ruined mill, and the bridge ended by giving up all these local beauties and devoting herself to the face of a child,—a small, plain face illuminated by a pair of eyes carrying such messages, such suggestions, such hints of sleeping power and insight, that one never tired of looking into their shining depths, nor of fancying that what one saw there was the reflection of one's own thought.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“Nancy was more impulsive than industrious, more generous than wise, more plucky than prudent; she had none too much perseverance and no patience at all.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Mother Carey's Chickens

“Why, mother!" cried Rebecca, clasping her knees with her hands; "why, mother, it's enough joy just to be here in the world on a day like this; to have the chance of seeing, feeling, doing, becoming! When you were seventeen, mother, wasn't it good just to be alive? You haven't forgotten?”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

“I am not wise enough to say how much of all this squalor and wretchedness and hunger is the fault of the people themselves, how much of it belongs to circumstances and environment, how much is the result of past errors of government, how much is race, how much is religion. I only know that children should never be hungry, that there are ignorant human creatures to be taught how to live; and if it is a hard task, the sooner it is begun the better, both for teachers and pupils. It is comparatively easy to form opinions and devise remedies, when one knows the absolute truth of things; but it is so difficult to find the truth here, or at least there are so many and such different truths to weigh in the balance....”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Penelope's Irish Experiences

“Yes, Mr. Popham is a Methodist and I'm a Congregationalist, but I say let the children go where they like, so I always take them with me.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Mother Carey's Chickens