Bess Streeter Aldrich > Quotes

“Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl. But it warmed more than your body. It warmed your heart...filled it, too, with melody that would last forever.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, Song of Years

“You have, to dream things out. It keeps a kind of an ideal before you. You see it first in your mind and then you set about to try and make it like the ideal. If you want a garden,—why, I guess you've got to dream a garden.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

“Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl. But it warmed more than your body. It warmed your heart... filled it, too, with a melody that would last forever. Even though you grew up and found you could never quite bring back the magic feeling of this night, the melody would stay in your heart always - a song for all the years.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, Song of Years

“There is no division nor subtraction in the heart-arithmetic of a good mother. There are only addition and multiplication.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

“I think that love is more like a light that you carry. At first childish happiness keeps it lighted and after that romance. Then motherhood lights it and then duty . . . and maybe after that sorrow. You wouldn't think that sorrow could be a light, would you, dearie? But it can. And then after that, service lights it. Yes. . . . I think that is what love is to a woman . . . a lantern in her hand.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

“You know, Grace, it's queer but I don't feel narrow. I feel broad. How can I explain it to you, so you would understand? I've seen everything...and I've hardly been away from this yard....
I've been part of the beginning and part of the growth. I've married...and borne children and looked into the face of death. Is childbirth narrow, Grace? Or marriage? Or death? When you've experienced all those things, Grace, the spirit has traveled although the body has been confined. I think travel is a rare privilege and I'm glad you can have it. But not every one who stays at home is narrow and not every one who travels is broad. I think if you can understand humanity...can sympathize with every creature...can put yourself into the personality of every one...you're not narrow...you're broad.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

“There ought to be a home for children to come to,—and their children,—a central place, to which they could always bring their joys and sorrows,—an old familiar place for them to return to on Sundays and Christmases. An old home ought always to stand like a mother with open arms. It ought to be here waiting for the children to come to it,—like homing pigeons.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

“For though love has been ridiculed and disgraced, exchanged and bartered, dragged through the courts, and sold for thirty pieces of silver, the bright, steady glow of its fire still shines on the hearth-stones of countless homes...”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A White Bird Flying

“The greatest antidote in the world for grief is work, and the necessity of work.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

“Regardless of the popular literary trend of the times, write the thing which lies close to your heart.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich

“All my girlhood I always planned to do something big…something constructive. It’s queer what ambitious dreams a girl has when she is young. I thought I would sing before big audiences or paint lovely pictures or write a splendid book. I always had that feeling in me of wanting to do something worth while. And just think, Laura…now I am eighty and I have not painted nor written nor sung.”

“But you’ve done lots of things, Grandma. You’ve baked bread…and pieced quilts…and taken care of your children.”

Old Abbie Deal patted the young girl’s hand. “Well…well…out of the mouths of babes. That’s just it, Laura, I’ve only baked bread and pieced quilts and taken care of children. But some women have to, don’t they?...But I’ve dreamed dreams, Laura. All the time I was cooking and patching and washing, I dreamed dreams. And I think I dreamed them into the children…and the children are carrying them out...doing all the things I wanted to and couldn’t.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

“Home was something besides so much lumber and plaster. You built your thoughts into the frame work. You planted a little of your heart with the trees and the shrubbery.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

“It was true, she thought, that the big things awe us but the little things touch us.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A White Bird Flying

“A person may encircle the globe with mind open only to bodily comfort. Another may live his life on a sixty-foot lot and listen to the voices of the universe.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich

“Abbie Deal went happily about her work, one baby in her arms and the other at her skirts, courage her lode-star and love her guide,—a song upon her lips and a lantern in her hand.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

“Junior was eleven. The statement is significant. There are a few peevish people in the world who believe that all eleven-year-old boys ought to be hung. Others, less irritable, think that gently chloroforming them would seem more humane. A great many good-natured folks contend that incarceration for a couple of years would prove the best way to dispose of them.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, Mother Mason

“...Uncle Harry Wentworth's dollar was turned deep under the sod. But though the sun shone on it and the rain fell, nothing ever came from it,—not a green thing nor a singing thing nor a human soul.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A White Bird Flying

“She thought of her younger days,—the gleam which seemed always ahead,—of the vague allure which accomplishing something in the arts had always held for her. And now she was nearly fifty and she was not to know the fruition of any of those hopes.

"Oh Will, I am so disappointed," she said to that invisible comrade who was only spirit and memory. "I can only feel those things,—not do them."

Isn't motherhood, itself, an accomplishment?

She knew that she made her own answer, and yet it gave her a sense of satisfaction and peace. Will might said it. It sounded like him.

"But I've made so many mistakes.... Will.... even in that."

You are a good mother, Abbie-girl."

Yes, it gave her a sense of peace and comfort.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

“You could not stop the winds and you could not stop Time. It went on and on,-and on.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich

“If the faith of all the mothers could blossom to its full fruition, there would be no unsuccessful men in the land.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

“You have to dream things out. It keeps a kind of an ideal before you. You see it first in your mind and then you set about to try to make it like the ideal. If you want a garden,-why, I guess you've got to dream a garden.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, Lantern in Her Hand

“And standing there... old Abbie Deal began to cry. They are the most painful tears in the world...the tears of the aged...for they come from dried beds where the emotions have long burned low.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

“Abbie would stop in her work and utter a prayer for him,—and, sent as it were from the bow of a mother's watchful care, bound by the cord of a mother's love, the little winged arrow on its flight must have reached Some one,—Somewhere.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

“...Mabel put on the boiled potatos, unmashed, the stewed tomatos, some inferior dried beef, and some bread that plainly said, 'Darling, I am growing old'.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, Mother Mason

“There are many memories. but I'll tell you the one I like to think of best of all. It's just a homely everyday thing, but to me it is the happiest of them all. It is evening time here in the old house and the supper is cooking and the table is set for the whole family. It hurts a mother, Laura, when the plates begin to be taken away one by one. First there are seven and then six and then five...and on down to a single plate. So I like to think of the table set for the whole family at supper time. The robins are singing in the cottonwoods and the late afternoon sun is shining across the floor... The children are playing out in the yard. I can hear their voices and happy laughter. There isn't much to that memory is there? Out of a lifetime of experiences you would hardly expect that to be the one I would choose as the happiest, would you? But it is.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

“I've tried to keep pleasant," Mabel went on. "You don't know how I've tried. I have that verse pinned up on my dresser, about

The man worth while is the man who can smile,
When everything goes dead wrong."

"Take it down," Mother said cheerfully. "If there's a verse in the world that has been worked overtime, it's that one. I can't think of anything more inane than to smile when everything goes dead wrong, unless it is to cry when everything is passably right. That verse always seemed to me to be a surface sort of affair. Take it down and substitute 'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.' That goes to the heart of things--when you feel that strength, then the dead-wrong things begin to miraculously right themselves.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, Mother Mason

“She wondered why she, herself, was always touched by such infinitesimal things. Their very homeliness and lack of worth seemed connecting the past with the present all the more. It was true, she thought, that the big things awe us but the little things touch us.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A White Bird Flying

“Hours fly...Flowers die.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A White Bird Flying

“I . . . you mean me?"

"Quite naturally, when I said, 'What about you, yourself,' I meant
you.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A White Bird Flying

“Will laughed. 'You're quite a dreamer, Abbie-girl.'
Abbie did not laugh. She was suddenly very sober. 'You have to, Will.' She said it a little vehemently. 'You have to dream things out. It keeps a kind of ideal before you.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand