O Pioneers! Quotes
"One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away."
"The main street was a deeply rutted road, now frozen hard, which ran from the squat red railway station and the grain 'elevator' at the north end of the town to the lumber yard and the horse pond at the south end."
"None of them had any appearance of permanence, and the howling wind blew under them as well as over them."
"The children were all in school, and there was nobody abroad in the streets but a few rough-looking countrymen in coarse overcoats, with their long caps pulled down to their noses."
"She wore a man's long ulster (not as if it were an affliction, but as if it were very comfortable and belonged to her; carried it like a young soldier), and a round plush cap, tied down with a thick veil."
"She had a serious, thoughtful face, and her clear, deep blue eyes were fixed intently on the distance, without seeming to see anything, as if she were in trouble."
"He was a thin, frail boy, with brooding dark eyes, very quiet in all his movements."
"But the great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes."
"He had an idea that no one understood how to farm it properly, and this he often discussed with Alexandra."
"They were grown men now, and, as Alexandra said, for the last few years they had been growing more and more like themselves."
"A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves."
"We'll live longer than he will. Some day the land itself will be worth more than all we can ever raise on it."
"These family discussions always depressed her, and made her remember all that she had been torn away from."
"The land did it. It had its little joke. It pretended to be poor because nobody knew how to work it right; and then, all at once, it worked itself."
"The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman."
"It's curious, too; on the outside Emil is just like an American boy, but underneath he is more Swedish than any of us."
"He shall do whatever he wants to. He is going to have a chance, a whole chance; that's what I've worked for."
"We can remember the graveyard when it was wild prairie, Carl, and now—"
"There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before."
"To get on with him you've got to make a fuss over him and act as if you thought he was a very important person all the time."
"I could stay by a job, but I never had the go in me that she has, when I was going my best."
"It took courage to come at all, Alexandra. I wouldn't have, if I hadn't wanted to see you very, very much."
"There's nothing to look forward to in my profession."
"Freedom so often means that one isn't needed anywhere."
"And yet I would rather have Emil grow up like that than like his two brothers."
"It's what goes on in the world that reconciles me."
"The dawn in the east looked like the light from some great fire that was burning under the edge of the world."
"Don't talk wild. You say you ought to have taken things into your own hands years ago. But how could you take hold of what wasn't there?"
"I've built it up myself, and it has nothing to do with you."
"The property of a family belongs to the men of the family because they are held responsible."
"Conditions were hard. Maybe I would never have been very soft, anyhow; but I certainly didn't choose to be the kind of girl I was."
"When one makes a mistake, there's no telling where it will stop."
"He had better opportunities; not to make money, but to make something of himself."
"It's queer what things one remembers and what things one forgets."
"How terrible it was to love people when you could not really share their lives!"
"She wanted to live and dream—a hundred years, forever! As long as this sweetness welled up in her heart, as long as her breast could hold this treasure of pain!"
"The Church has always held that life is for the living."
"The heart, when it is too much alive, aches for that brown earth, and ecstasy has no fear of death."
"She had lived a day of her new life of perfect love, and it had left her like this."
"We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it—for a little while."