“Taking up marriage is a good excuse for taking up cursing."These is my words”

“Taking up marriage is a good excuse for taking up cursing, I think.”

“Mrs. Faulkner had sidled up to me and said Good day, Mrs. Elliot?I just looked at her, and I saw in her eyes that she was wanting some kind of approval for her boy because of his career ahead, and she suddenly just looked like an old lady, not fancy and rich and frightening. An old lady whose son admired my husband, and who herself would be as helpless in the Territories as a newborn calf and not nearly as useful. Good day, I said back. It is a funny thing how much more proud people can be of themselves if they never step back and take a good look in a glass.”

“Our children weigh hard on my heart, and thinking about them growing up honest and healthy, or just living to grow up at all, makes a load in my chest that is bigger than the safe at the bank, and more valuable to me than all the gold inside it.”

“Children are a burden to a mother, but not the way a heavy box is to a mule. Our children weight hard on my heart, and thinking about them growing up honest and healthy, or just living to grow up at all, makes a load in my chest that is bigger than the safe at the bank,and more valuable to me than all the gold inside it.”

“Living is getting knocked down time and again, then standing up time and again, and once more. It's easy to act honorable when things are coming along and all your pastures are green. Plenty difficult when the ground is dried and burned and people have connived to take even that from you. I'll sell this place, or I'll lose it. I'll go on. People who don't have hard times aren't living.”

“Low down dirty ornery rotten skunk of a cussed mule-headed soldier! What's he want with my book anyway? And what kind of a way is that to write a congratulations? I am so mad I could walk clear to that fort and take him on single handed.”