Quotes from Anna Katharine Green

Do we fear suffering or apathy most? Is it from experience or the monotony of a commonplace existence that we quickest flee?

And leaving them there, with the light of growing hope and confidence on their faces, we went out again into the night, and so into a dream from which I have never waked, though the shine of her dear eyes have been now the load-star of my life for many happy, happy months.

It was no mere fancy. Fancy does not remold a man in a moment. Fancy has its ups and downs, its hot minutes and-its cold. This was a steady inspiration; an enlarge¬ ment of the soul such as I had hitherto been a stranger to, and which I knew then, as plainly as I do now, would serve to make my happiness or my misery as Fortune lent her aid or passed me coldly by.

But Fate was in an impish mood that night.

Words can be said in a moment that will not be forgotten in years.

It must have been a very dreary smile and ironic in the extreme; for my heart was filled with bitterness and could express itself in no other way.

Solitude! How do we picture it? A man alone on a raft in the midst of a boundless sea. A figure against a graying sky, with chasms beneath and ice peaks above. Such a derelict between life and death I felt myself to be

Marriage founded upon deception can never lead to happiness.

A maiden-woman, as independent as myself, need not envy any girl the doubtful blessing of a husband. I chose to be independent, and I am, and what more is there to be said about it?

I had feared to be presumptuous; of building up a fairyland out of dreams; of yielding to my imagination rather than to my good sense. And yet, deep down in some inner consciousness, a faint insidious hope had whispered to itself that if I showed myself worthy, perhaps-perhaps- And now perhaps had become reality, and all doubt and mistrust a vanished dream.

She must be found for all that," said he, "and shall, if I have to send out Q." "Q?" "An agent of mine who is a living interrogation point; so we call him Q, which is short for query.

If you look long into human nature, you will see that the bonds which hold the firmest are not material ones, that an idea will make a man and mold a character, that it lies at the source of all heroisms, and is to be courted or feared, as the case may be.

When you are that- when a woman is a guiding star to her husband- she may face the ills of life without fear, for the blessing of Heaven is upon her.

The darkness ahead was not impenetrable.

I felt a thrill. Something more than wealth more even than love, was to be my portion. The living of a clean life in sight of God and man.

A woman is a victim of her own emotions.

Yet I was glad to see her weep, for only first offenders weep, and first offenders are amenable to influence, especially if they have been led into wrong by impulse, and are weak rather than wicked. Anxious

Don't put it into words. Let us leave some things to be understood, not said.

There are two kinds of artists in this world; those that work because the spirit is in them, and they cannot be silent if they would, and those that speak from a conscientious desire to make apparent to others the beauty that has awakened their own admiration.

Do we fear suffering or apathy most? Is it from experience or the monotony of a commonplace existence that we quickest flee?