Best 17 quotes of D. E. Stevenson on MyQuotes

Friends that you have known for a long time and love very dearly never seem to grow old.

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.

It was curious that when we had been able to buy new clothes when we wanted we had never really appreciated them nor enjoyed them. You have to be in the position of needing things very badly indeed before you can appreciate possessing them.

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.

Poverty is easy to bear if it is only temporary, easier still if it is an entirely voluntary burden.

Prayer did not come easily to me for I always feel that prayer is a silent things, and opening of the heart. To ask for earthly benefits, to reel out a list of requirements and expect them to be supplied is not prayer. It is putting God in the same category as an intelligent grocer.

...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.

There is something very appealing about a room which one occupied as a child; it brings back one's childhood more vividly than anything else I know.

To have all my dear ones together under one roof - that is all I ask of life.

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.

Don't you worry. It doesn't do no good worrying over things—just sail in.

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.

She had always suffered from a curious fear of what was going to happen round the next corner. Even when life went smoothly and nothing occurred to justify her vague apprehensions, they did not altogether disperse. She had tried to face these fears and conquer them, but she could never do so entirely, she could only strain forward into the darkness of the future, expecting and fearing the unknown. She was brave in the face of dangers she could see, but she could not arm herself against shadows. These fears were her weakness.

She was sitting and thinking . . . when a tiny flower fell onto her plate. This was no miracle of course, the explanation was simple, Rhoda had picked some sprays of viburnum fragrans in the kitchen garden. . . . She had brought them in and arranged them in a bowl and placed them in the middle of the table―there was no more to it than that. Rhoda was about to brush the flower from her plate when suddenly the perfection of it struck her . . . one tiny flower-head but quite perfect. It was so small and insignificant that she herself who had picked the sprays and arranged them had not noticed the beauty of it. . . . The thought of the small insignificant thing with its perfection of beauty remained with her and gave her happiness. The floweret had dropped onto her plate. Look, it said. Here I am―and there are millions like me―and each one of us is perfect―perfectly beautiful. Here's your world. It's full of beauty. Be happy in it.

The painter was pleased with her work. She had managed to catch her sitter's characteristic expression—the look of a good child, a wondering sort of look, innocent and serious. It was humility, thought Rhoda. That was the keynote of Bel's character. Rhoda had never prized this virtue—she had thought it overrated—but now she realised that she had been mistaken. Humility was not just an absence of pride; it was not a negative virtue; it was a definite 'fruit of the spirit.' False humility was horrible, of course (vide Uriah Heap), but real humility, growing from within, was beautiful.

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.

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.