Main Street Quotes
"A breeze which had crossed a thousand miles of wheat-lands bellied her taffeta skirt in a line so graceful, so full of animation and moving beauty, that the heart of a chance watcher on the lower road tightened to wistfulness over her quality of suspended freedom."
"She was meditating upon walnut fudge, the plays of Brieux, the reasons why heels run over, and the fact that the chemistry instructor had stared at the new coiffure which concealed her ears."
"The days of pioneering, of lassies in sunbonnets, and bears killed with axes in piney clearings, are deader now than Camelot; and a rebellious girl is the spirit of that bewildered empire called the American Middlewest."
"She did not yet know the immense ability of the world to be casually cruel and proudly dull, but if she should ever learn those dismaying powers, her eyes would never become sullen or heavy or rheumily amorous."
"I'll make 'em put in a village green, and darling cottages, and a quaint Main Street!"
"She played tennis, gave chafing-dish parties, took a graduate seminar in the drama, went 'twosing,' and joined half a dozen societies for the practise of the arts or the tense stalking of a thing called General Culture."
"She sighed, 'That's what I'll do after college! I'll get my hands on one of these prairie towns and make it beautiful. Be an inspiration.'"
"In her class there were two or three prettier girls, but none more eager."
"Carol's family were self-sufficient in their inventive life, with Christmas a rite full of surprises and tenderness, and 'dressing-up parties' spontaneous and joyously absurd."
"The history instructor was a retired minister. He was sarcastic today. He begged of sporting young Mr. Charley Holmberg, 'Now Charles, would it interrupt your undoubtedly fascinating pursuit of that malevolent fly if I were to ask you to tell us that you do not know anything about King John?'"
"For all her enthusiasms, for all the fondness and the 'crushes' which she inspired, Carol's acquaintances were shy of her."
"Always she was disappointed, but always she effervesced anew—over the Student Volunteers, who intended to become missionaries, over painting scenery for the dramatic club, over soliciting advertisements for the college magazine."
"The sociology instructor was new. He was married, and therefore taboo, but he had come from Boston, he had lived among poets and socialists and Jews and millionaire uplifters at the University Settlement in New York, and he had a beautiful white strong neck."
"Every man fell in love then with religion and Carol."
"The stretch of faded gold stubble broken only by clumps of willows encircling white houses and red barns."
"She stroked a satin pillow while she read."
"In the hotel office she could see a stretch of bare unclean floor, a line of rickety chairs with brass cuspidors between, a writing-desk with advertisements in mother-of-pearl letters upon the glass-covered back."
"Sam Clark had been talking to Carol about motor cars, but he felt his duties as host."
"Carol saw that George Edwin Mott and the blanched Mr. and Mrs. Dawson were not yet hypnotized. They looked as though they wondered whether they ought to look as though they disapproved."
"Ezra Stowbody was a troglodyte. He had come to Gopher Prairie in 1865."
"As Carol defied decency by sitting down with the men, Mr. Stowbody was piping to Mr. Dawson."
"Dave Dyer interrupted to give tidings, 'D’ tell you that Clara Biggins was in town couple days ago?'"
"There hasn’t been much labor trouble around here, has there, Mr. Stowbody?"
"Do you approve of union labor?" Carol inquired of Mr. Elder.
"What do you think of profit-sharing?" Carol ventured.
"We’ll steal the whole day, and go hunting."
"They clumped out to the livery buggy, they packed the kit and the box of lunch into the back, crying to each other that it was a magnificent day."
"She touched the thought, 'It would be sweet to have a baby of my own.'"
"She was poisoned with doubt, as she drooped up to bed."
"A small-town bungalow, the wives of a village doctor and a village dry-goods merchant, a provincial teacher, a colloquial brawl over paying a servant a dollar more a week."
"She saw that in a window three old women were gasping."
"She saw that the others were listening, waiting for her to be objectionable."
"A thaw which stripped the snow from the sidewalks; a ringing iron night when the lakes could be heard booming; a clear roistering morning."
"She ran upstairs to the unfrequented guestroom; she wept in terror."
"The Jolly Seventeen (the membership of which ranged from fourteen to twenty-six) was the social cornice of Gopher Prairie."
"The world was so luminous that she sat down at her rickety little desk in the living-room to make a poem."
"Carol felt guilty. She devoted herself to admiring the spinsterish Miss Villets."
"She tried to get back into the current. She edged over to Mrs. McGanum."
"She was relieved by the admiration with which the jeune fille Rita Simons looked at the steel buckles on her pumps."
"She nodded, then shook her head, and touchily left Mrs. Howland to get out of it any meaning she desired."
"Carol saw that the others were listening, waiting for her to be objectionable."
"She saw an airy figure in trousers and coat of green brocade edged with gold."
"She cried to Pollock, 'Don’t you think we ought to get up a dramatic club?'"
"She saw that after the strain of listening in a cultured manner the audience had collapsed."
"She crossed her trousered legs, and snuggled luxuriously above her saucer of ginger."
"She was vexed. She resented his clumsiness."
"She was close to simpering in the sweetness with which she addressed Mrs. Howland."
"Carol was certain that she was a great reformer."
"She was working up to a state of painfully righteous war."
"She was a woman with a working brain and no work."
"She ignored Bea’s call from the kitchen; she ran upstairs to the unfrequented guestroom; she wept in terror."
"She ignored the universal glance at her arches."
"She ignored the fact that it was she who had turned him from a rustic to a person who was uncomfortably civilized."
"I always feel as though I walked around in a cloud, looking out at others but not being seen. I feel so inconspicuous and so normal—so normal that there’s nothing about me to discuss."
"Well then! Will you be impersonal? I’m paying you the compliment of supposing that you can be. I want you to be big enough to help me make this town worth while."
"Of course the illiterate ones resent your references to anything farther away than Minneapolis. They’re so suspicious—that’s it, suspicious."
"Stop it! Stop beating me! I know all that. What they meant was: they felt you were starting dangerous competition by giving a party such as most people here can’t afford."
"It hurts. It makes these people seem so beastly and treacherous, when I’ve been perfectly natural with them."
"And let there be no (what is it?) of farewell When I put out to sea, But let the—"
"Burns was quite a poor boy and he did not enjoy the advantages we enjoy today, except for the advantages of the fine old Scotch kirk where he heard the Word of God preached more fearlessly than even in the finest big brick churches in the big and so-called advanced cities of today."
"Me? Spend all my hard-earned cash on building houses for a lot of shiftless beggars that never had the sense to save their money?"
"I never thought I’d be agreeing with Old Man Dawson, the penny-pinching old land-thief—and a fine briber he is, too. But you got the wrong slant. You aren’t one of the people—yet."
"You got to get more iron and cussedness into you. Come join us cheerful bums, and some day—when we educate ourselves and quit being bums—we’ll take things and run ’em straight."
"But I must say it seems to me we should lose the whole point of the thing by not regarding it as charity. Why, that’s the chief adornment of the true Christian and the church!"
"And isn’t it better so? I should hate to think of a world in which we were deprived of all the pleasure of giving."
"Heavens and earth, they have more time than we have! They ought to be mighty good and grateful to get anything, no matter what shape it’s in."
"If this class of people had an understanding of Science and that we are the children of God and nothing can harm us, they wouldn’t be in error and poverty."
"But it’s been a privilege to hear Carol’s dear generous ideas, hasn’t it!"
"Women haven’t any place in politics. They would lose all their daintiness and charm if they became involved in these horrid plots and logrolling."
"I hate to break up the party, but it’s getting late, and a doctor never knows when he’ll get routed out before morning."
"I didn’t suppose there was anyone who felt that we could get enough of the Bible! I guess if the Grand Old Book has withstood the attacks of infidels for these two thousand years it is worth our slight consideration!"
"I believe! The woodland gods still live! And out there, the great land. It’s beautiful as the mountains."
"The sooner she’s sent to the school for incorrigible girls down at Sauk Centre, the better for all."
"And if I can’t do a better ’pendectomy than either Westlake or McGanum, I’ll eat my hat!"
"She turned to the Chautauqua as she had turned to the dramatic association, to the library-board."
"She pictured a condensed university course brought to the people."
"It was contentment—the contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for their restless walking."
"But it was the contentment of the lost hunter stopping to rest."
"For from the Chautauqua itself she got nothing but wind and chaff and heavy laughter."
"If I didn’t give my baby—my baby—enough sanctification in those nine hours of hell, then he can’t get any more out of the Reverend Mr. Zitterel!"
"She was part of the town. Its philosophy and its feuds dominated her."
"She was no longer irritated by the cooing of the matrons."
"She was delighted when Miles, speaking as one man to another, admonished Hugh."
"In her fluid thought certain convictions appeared, jaggedly, a fragment of an impression at a time."
"She was glad to find that he agreed with them on every point."
"It must be just as discouraging for the Gopher Prairieite to see Venice and make comparisons."
"Life is comfortable and clean enough here already."
"She raged mutely against the indifferent gods."
"She was altogether reconciled … for an hour."
"She crept away from the hump of bedding that was Kennicott."
"The town was full of his stories, his friendliness, his memory for names, his clothes, his trout-flies, his generosity."
"They were glad to find that he agreed with them on every point."
"My house has been contaminated long enough. Why the Lord should afflict me—"
"I gave him up, but—This is my affair! I’m not intruding!"
"What the dickens have you been saying to Ma Westlake?"
"What do you know about the thoughts in hearts? You just play at reforming the world."
"I certainly am! and good and thankful you may be that I found her out in time, before she could get you into something, Carol."
"I’ve been hearing vague rumors you were interested in this Erik Valborg. I knew you couldn’t be guilty."
"Whoa! Whoa! Hold up! Who’s the hussy, Sister Bogart?"
"I want to run away for a few days. Wouldn’t you like to skip down to Chicago?"