Charles Dudley Warner Quotes

The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value

Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough.

Goodness comes out of people who bask in the sun, as it does out of a sweet apple roasted before the fire.

Lettuce is like conversation; it must be fresh and crisp, so sparkling that you scarcely notice the bitter in it.

It is fortunate that each generation does not comprehend its own ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous.

There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it.

The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is the latest. Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure. Fondness for the ground comes back to a man after he has run the round of pleasure and business, eaten dirt, and sown wild oats, drifted about the world, and taken the wind of all its moods. The love of digging in the ground (or of looking on while he pays another to dig) is as sure to come back to him, as he is sure, at last, to go under the ground, and stay there.

To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds, and watch the renewal of life - this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do.

Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure.

No man but feels more of a man in the world if he have a bit of ground that he can call his own. However small it is on the surface, it is four thousand miles deep; and that is a very handsome property.

A cynic might suggest as the motto of modern life this simple legend-"just as good as the real.

Perhaps nobody ever accomplishes all that he feels lies in him to do; but nearly every one who tries his power touches the walls of his being.

Nature is, in fact, a suggester of uneasiness, a promoter of pilgrimages and of excursions of the fancy which never come to any satisfactory haven.

People always overdo the matter when they attempt deception.

To poke a wood fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the world.

Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently.

We are half ruined by conformity, but we should be wholly ruined without it.

There is nothing that disgusts a man like getting beaten at chess by a woman.

The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the world.

Public opinion is stronger than the legislature, and nearly as strong as the ten commandments.

It is difficult to be emphatic when no one is emphatic on the other side.

A well known American writer said once that, while everybody talked about the weather, nobody seemed to do anything about it.

Happy is said to be the family which can eat onions together. They are, for the time being, separate, from the world, and have a harmony of aspiration.

What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it.

Blessed be agriculture! if one does not have too much of it.

A woman set on anything will walk right through the moral crockery without wincing.

The boy who expects every morning to open into a new world finds that today is like yesterday, but he believes tomorrow will be different.

If there was any petting to be done...he chose to do it. Often he would sit looking at me, and then, moved by a delicate affection, come and pull at my coat and sleeve until he could touch my face with his nose, and then go away contented.

Nothing shows one who his friends are like prosperity and ripe fruit.

There isn't a wife in the world who has not taken the exact measure of her husband, weighed him and settled him in her own mind, and knows him as well as if she had ordered him after designs and specifications of her own.

Politics make strange bedfellows.

One of the best things in the world to be is a boy; it requires no experience, but needs some practice to be a good one

Nothing is worth reading that does not require an alert mind.

There are those who say that trees shade the garden too much, and interfere with the growth of the vegetables. There may be something in this:but when I go down the potato rows, the rays of the sun glancing upon my shining blade, the sweat pouring down my face, I should be grateful for shade.

A great artist can paint a great picture on a small canvas.

A garden is an awful responsibility. You never know what you may be aiding to grow in it.

Hoe while it is spring, and enjoy the best anticipations. It is not much matter if things do not turn out well.

How many wars have been caused by fits of indigestion, and how many more dynasties have been upset by the love of woman than by the hate of man?

The tenure of a literary reputation is the most uncertain and fluctuating of all.

I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity.

In onion is strength; and a garden without it lacks flavour. The onion, in its satin wrappings, is among the most beautiful of vegetables; and it is the only one that represents the essence of things. It can almost be said to have a soul.

The thing generally raised on city land is taxes.

I do not know the names of all the weeds and plants, I have to do as Adam did in his garden... name things as I find them.

The most popular persons are those who take the world as it is who find the least fault.

The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is the latest.

The chief effect of talk on any subject is to strengthen one's own opinions, and, in fact, one never knows exactly what he does believe until he is warmed into conviction by the heat of attack and defence.

What small potatoes we all are, compared with what we might be!

There was never a nation that became great until it came to the knowledge that it had nowhere in the world to go for help.

There is no such thing as absolute value in this world. You can only estimate what a thing is worth to you.

The world so quickly adjusts itself after any loss, that the return of the departed would nearly always throw it, even the circle most interested, into confusion.