The Song Of The Lark Quotes
"As the doctor in New England villages is proverbially old, so the doctor in small Colorado towns twenty-five years ago was generally young."
"His hands were large and well kept, but ruggedly formed, and the backs were shaded with crinkly reddish hair."
"He wished he had gone down to Denver to hear Fay Templeton sing 'Seesaw.'"
"The doctor came back and threw a black bag upon his desk. He wrote some instructions for his man on a prescription pad and then drew on his overcoat."
"On either side of the road and at the outer edge of the board sidewalk, the snow had been shoveled into breastworks."
"The air was so clear that the white sand hills to the east of Moonstone gleamed softly."
"Thea looked at him with greedy affection."
"There was something awe-inspiring about Mrs. Tellamantez and her shell."
"The wind never slept on this plain, the old man said."
"The old rancher picked up an iron ox-shoe from one of the furrows and gave it to her for a keepsake."
"The idea! he muttered; to be such an ass at his age, about the seventh!"
"The old woman even volunteered to take Thea on an adventure of her own."
"Thea often thought that the nicest thing about Ray was his love for Mexico and the Mexicans."
"The air had cooled, the sun was setting, and the desert was on fire."
"The acquisition of this room was the beginning of a new era in Thea’s life."
"From the time when she moved up into the wing, Thea began to live a double life."
"Ray Kennedy, on his way from the depot to his boardinghouse, often looked up and saw Thea’s light burning when the rest of the house was dark, and felt cheered as by a friendly greeting."
"Thea was patient with Ray, even in regard to the liberties he took with her name."
"It was the custom for each of the different Sunday Schools in Moonstone to give a concert on Christmas Eve."
"Because his orchestra was to play for the concert, Mr. Wunsch imagined that he had been put in charge of the music, and he became arrogant."
"On Christmas Eve she was nervous and excited."
"Thea’s fighting powers had been impaired by an ulcerated tooth and consequent loss of sleep, so she gave in."
"Ray had no very clear idea of what might be going on in Thea’s head, but he knew that something was."
"Thea, however, had one in the person of her addlepated aunt, Tillie Kronborg."
"The dramatic club was the pride of Tillie’s heart, and her enthusiasm was the principal factor in keeping it together."
"When Fritz came home in the early blue twilight the snow was flying faster, Mrs. Kohler was cooking Hasenpfeffer in the kitchen, and the professor was seated at the piano, playing the Gluck, which he knew by heart."
"One Saturday, late in June, Thea arrived early for her lesson."
"The two symmetrical linden trees were the proudest things in the garden."
"Dr. Archie was coming up from the depot, restless and discontented, wishing there were something to do."
Think of it," Thea snorted impatiently. "Nobody up but us and the rabbits!
"Thea shook her head. "Oh, no, I don’t, Dr. Archie. He’s hard to get at, but he’s been a real musician in his time."
"He had married a mean woman; and he must accept the consequences."
"Mother," said Peter Kronborg to his wife one morning about two weeks after Wunsch’s departure, "how would you like to drive out to Copper Hole with me today?"
"The pleasantest experience Thea had that summer was a trip that she and her mother made to Denver in Ray Kennedy’s caboose."
"Ray looked his best out of doors, when his thick red hands were covered by gloves, and the dull red of his sunburned face somehow seemed right in the light and wind."
"You needn’t bother to talk, Thee. The doctor’s medicine makes me sort of dopey. But it’s nice to have company. Kind of cozy, don’t you think?"
But you won’t forget about sister, will you?" Thor shook his head. "And won’t you be glad when sister comes back and can take you over to Mrs. Kohler’s to see the pigeons?
"You see! You’ll be in society before you know it. There ain’t many girls as accomplished as you."
"Every people has had its religion. All religions are good, and all are pretty much alike."
"There’s not one person in Moonstone that really lives the way the New Testament says. Does it matter, or don’t it?"
"There isn’t a tramp along the ‘Q’ system who hasn’t heard of her. We all like people who do things, even if we only see their faces on a cigar-box lid."
"Ever occur to you, Thee, that they have to be on time close enough to make time?"
"I have just been telling Miss Kronborg that though I cannot promise her anything permanent, I might give her something for the next few months."
"I don’t go much on old maids looking after girls."
"It seems to me we ought to try to carry out his wishes exactly, if Thea is willing."
"Every artist makes himself born. It is very much harder than the other time, and longer."
"Only what I hold in my two hands is there for me!"
"I think you have vocation, but for the voice, not for the piano."
"Sometimes a little thing like that, that seems nothing at the time, comes back on one afterward and troubles one a good deal."
"The voice is a wild thing. It can’t be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens."
"The best thing about her preparation was that she had developed an unusual power of work."
"This is a good time to harden your chest."
"I remember when I first heard you in Pittsburg, long ago. It was a lifeline you threw me."
"It is-a most like Mexican, but not quite."
"All this drudgery will kill me if once in a while I cannot hope something, for somebody!"
"When you was a little girl, no bigger than that, you come to my house one day ’bout noon, like this, and I was in the door, playing guitar. You was barehead, barefoot; you run away from home."
"Thanks for your advice! But I prefer to steer my boat into the din of roaring breakers. Even if the journey is my last, I may find what I have never found before."
"If you knew how long I have wanted to get him away from here, Miss Kronborg! He is never tired, never discouraged, now."
"But suppose one can never get out what they’ve got in them? Suppose they make a mess of it in the end; then what?"
"That’s the first real voice I have heard in Chicago," she said decidedly. "I don’t count that stupid Priest woman."
"I hate her for the sake of what I used to think a singer might be."
"The art of making yourself agreeable never comes amiss, Miss Kronborg. I should say you rather need a little practice along that line."
"The people won’t matter much, I fancy. They will come and go. She is very much interested in herself—as she should be."
"In this case we may waive formalities. We really haven’t time. This is today, but it will soon be tomorrow, and then we may be very different people, and in some other country."
"I’m interested in talent. There are only two interesting things in the world, anyhow; and talent is one of them."
"I could not write you frankly, and so I would not write at all."
"It is a great deal to ask, but I wonder if you could come to New York to help me out?"
"I have got into difficulties, and I need your advice."
"I am afraid I must even ask you to lend me money."
"I have to go to Germany to study, and it can’t be put off any longer."
"Needless to say, I don’t want any word of this to reach my family."
"If you can come, please telegraph me at this hotel."
"Don’t despair of me. I’ll make it up to you yet."
"I’ve always noticed that women have confidence in you. You have the doctor’s way of getting next. And you enjoy that kind of thing?"
"You Americans are so afraid of stooping to learn anything."
"The things you hope for don’t always turn out like that, by a long sight."
"The children you don’t especially need, you have always with you, like the poor."
"Thea’s plan seems sound to me, Mrs. Kronborg. There’s no reason I can see why you shouldn’t pull up and live for years yet, under proper care."
"Oh, I knew she’d never have sent for you if she’d done anything to shame us. She was always proud."
"Bringing up a family is not all it’s cracked up to be."
"It’s been quite a satisfaction to you and me, doctor, having her voice turn out so fine."
"She’s given us a good deal to think about."
"But I guess she’ll take a finer instrument than that with her, back to Sweden!"
"All the old furniture and the worn spots in the carpet—it rests my mind to go over them."
"You see, when I set out from Moonstone with you, I had had a rich, romantic past. I had lived a long, eventful life, and an artist’s life, every hour of it."
"The point to which I could go was scratched in me then. I haven’t reached it yet, by a long way."
"Your work becomes your personal life. You are not much good until it does."
"There’s only one thing that’s all beautiful—and always beautiful! That’s why my interest keeps up."
When you’ve got it all out—the last, the finest thrill of it, the brightest hope of it,"—she lifted her hand above her head and dropped it—"then we stop. We do nothing but repeat after that.
"What one really strives for in art is not the sort of thing you are likely to find when you drop in for a performance at the opera."
"How can I be indifferent? If that doesn’t matter, then nothing matters."
"If I didn’t care, I’d be in a bad way. What else have I got?"
"My life is full of jealousies and disappointments, you know. You get to hating people who do contemptible work and who get on just as well as you do."
"Loving you is a heroic discipline. It wears a man out."
"I have to think well of myself, to work."
"We don’t get fairy tales in this world, and he has, after all, cared more and longer than anybody else."
"My life hasn’t been a gay one, any more than yours."
"The best she had was unavailable; she could not break through to it."
"Every movement was the right movement, that her body was absolutely the instrument of her idea."
"What she had so often tried to reach, lay under her hand. She had only to touch an idea to make it live."