“There is no division nor subtraction in the heart-arithmetic of a good mother. There are only addition and multiplication.”

“Katherine it was who took upon herself the complete charge of [Junior's] speech. Not an insignificant "have went" nor an infinitesimal "I seen" ever escaped the keen ears of his eldest sister, who immediately corrected him. Mother sometimes thought Katherine a little severe when, in the interest of proper speaking, she would stop him in the midst of an exciting account of a home-run. There were times, thought Mother, when the spirit of the thing was so much more important than the flesh in which it was clothed.”

“...Uncle Harry Wentworth's dollar was turned deep under the sod. But though the sun shone on it and the rain fell, nothing ever came from it,—not a green thing nor a singing thing nor a human soul.”

“Regardless of the popular literary trend of the times, write the thing which lies close to your heart.”

“I've tried to keep pleasant," Mabel went on. "You don't know how I've tried. I have that verse pinned up on my dresser, aboutThe man worth while is the man who can smile,When everything goes dead wrong.""Take it down," Mother said cheerfully. "If there's a verse in the world that has been worked overtime, it's that one. I can't think of anything more inane than to smile when everything goes dead wrong, unless it is to cry when everything is passably right. That verse always seemed to me to be a surface sort of affair. Take it down and substitute 'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.' That goes to the heart of things--when you feel that strength, then the dead-wrong things begin to miraculously right themselves.”

“Then she laughed, a bubbling, deliciously girlish laugh, and the Thing relaxed its hold on her heart, turned up its toes, and died.”

“Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl. But it warmed more than your body. It warmed your heart...filled it, too, with melody that would last forever.”