Best 35 quotes of Louise Dickinson Rich on MyQuotes

Here the people seem to possess the secret of tranquility and to live lives of more than surface contentment.

Mainiacs away from Maine are truly displaced persons, only half alive, only half aware of their immediate surroundings. Their inner attention is always preoccupied and pre-empted by the tiny pinpoint on the face of the globe called Down East. They try to live not in such a manner that they will eventually be welcomed into Paradise, but only so that someday they can go home to Maine.

There are other things that contribute to health besides a balanced diet. There are fresh air and sunlight and lack of nervous tension.

We belong to no cult. We are not Nature Lovers. We don't love nature any more than we love breathing. Nature is simply something indispensable, like air and light and water, that we accept as necessary to living, and the nearer we can get to it the happier we are.

Adventure, free of actual risk, is hard to produce.

A house you can rebuild; a bridge you can restring; a washed-out road you can fill in. But there is nothing you can do about a tree but mourn.

All ordinary people like us, everywhere, are trying to find the same things. It makes no difference whether they are New Englanders or Texans or Malayans or Finns. They all want to be left alone to conduct their own private search for a personal peace, a reasonable security, a little love, a chance to attain happiness through achievement.

A man who has cursed the boss all evening to his confreres is almost always a man who goes to bed feeling at peace with the world, and who wakes up ready to put out a good day's work.

A reasonable amount of danger is part of the price of living.

Aside from forest fire, there's nothing to be afraid of in the woods, except yourself. If you've got sense, you can keep out of trouble. If you haven't got sense, you'll get into trouble, here or anywhere else.

Christmas in the woods is so much better than Christmas on the Outside. We do exactly what we want to do about it, not what we have to do because the neighbors will think it's funny if we don't; or because of the kids, who will judge our efforts not by their own standards but by the standards set up by the parents of other kids.

Every woman occasionally wonders what manner of man she has married. No matter how long she has been living with her husband, once in a while he presents a new face. It's the bunk about women being enigmas and men being just transparent little boys at heart. Or else I'm gullible.

Here I dare to be myself. I don't see why it should ever be again be important to me what I wear, or whether I have read the latest book or seen the latest play, or know the newest catch word. I don't see why I should ever care again what people think of me. It seems silly now, but those things were once important. I don't see why it should ever matter to me again who does or does not invite me to her house, who does or does not speak to me, who does or does not have more money than I have. Those things used to matter, though, because I had no identity of my own. I had nothing to go by but the standards someone else had set up.

I feel a great regard for trees; they represent age and beauty and the miracles of life and growth.

If it would help humanity or the course of the War by so much as one iota, I would gladly sit all day long and listen to eye-witness accounts of air raids and hour by hour reports on the progress made or not made along the numerous fronts. But it would't help anything, and it would keep me in a constant state of turmoil and indigestion. So we have our fifteen minute dose of everything's-going-to-hell each evening, and the rest of the day we try to forget about it. There's not very much tranquility left in the world today.

If you have a simply swell story in mind, you can forget the rules. A swell story takes care of itself.

I like to know what my friends are thinking and feeling. If too long a time elapses without my checking up on these things, I find that where once was a friend there is now a pleasant stranger.

I'm a good knitter, and I'm proud of it. I see no point in being modest about things you know you do well. It doesn't indicate humility so much as hypocrisy or lack of perception.

In spite of all that is said, and more especially written, about the crabbed New Englander, New Englanders, like all ordinary people, are nice. Their manner of proffering a favor is sometimes on the crusty side, but that is much more often diffidence than surliness.

I think the difficulty with people who can't follow printed directions for knitting or anything else is that they try to understand them. They read the whole thing through and it doesn't make sense to them, so they start with a defeatist attitude.

It's a terribly trite thing to say, I know, but most of us have to be needed to be happy.

It's fun to take a pile of raw materials and make something out of them. The more demanding the work, the greater the satisfaction.

It's very illuminating to have to make a list, which you will very possibly have occasion to use, of the things you'd save in an extremity. It reduces one's material possessions to their proper place.

I've read a lot of first-rate writing, and I have some critical sense; so I know where I stand. I'll never be first rate. I'll improve with practice, I trust, but I haven't got what it takes to reach the top.

Most local cooks have two ideas about what to do with food. They either fry it, or else they make chowder out of it.

Nature is strictly moral. There is no attempt to cheat the Earth my means of steel vault of bronze coffin. I hope that when I die I too may be permitted to pay at once my oldest outstanding debt, to restore promptly the minerals and salts that have been lent to me for the little while that I have use for blood and bone and flesh.

Once a thing is forgotten, it's forgotten until next time. Then you find to your surprise that a lot of things you thought were essential aren't essential at all. It's very enlightening.

One of the most important parts of education is learning to get along with other people.

Parenthood anywhere from the heart of Texas to the middle of Manhattan is one long coping with maladjusted personalities, crooked teeth, allergies to goose feathers and lamentable traits inherited from the other side of the family.

The things we fear are almost always things which needn't be feared at all. They are creatures of our imagination.

The three weapons to use against axe cuts are: (a) sense enough not to get cut, (b) a good working knowledge of how to apply a tourniquet, if the worst occurs, and (c) a philosophical attitude.

We don't have plays and music and contact with sophisticated minds, and a round of social engagements. All we have are sun and wind and rain, and space in which to move and breathe. All we have are the forests, and the calm expanses of the lakes, and time to call our own. All we have are the hunting and fishing and the swimming, and each other.

We've managed to make a good marriage. This I say with all humility. It's a marriage in which there is nothing that can be hurt by the roughest usage. It's a marriage that you can let yourself go in, a marriage in which you can put your feet up and relax.

You can think of a lot of things to make out of nothing, if you have to.

You don't have to understand directions. All you have to do is follow them; and you can follow them only one step at a time. What you need is not intelligence, but a blind faith.