Ellen Glasgow
Novelist
1873-04-22
Quotes by Ellen Glasgow
-
A little later, when breakfast was over and I had not yet gone up-stairs to my room, I had my first interview with Doctor Brandon, the famous alienist who was in charge of the case. I had never seen him before, but from the first moment that I looked at him I took his measure, almost by intuition. He was, I suppose, honest enough -- I have always granted him that, bitterly as I have felt toward him. It wasn't his fault that he lacked red blood in his brain, or that he had formed the habit, from long association with abnormal phenomena, of regarding all life as a disease. He was the sort of physician -- every nurse will understand what I mean -- who deals instinctively with groups instead of with individuals. He was long and solemn and very round in the face; and I hadn't talked to him ten minutes before I knew he had been educated in Germany, and that he had learned over there to treat every emotion as a pathological manifestation. I used to wonder what he got out of life -- what any one got out of life who had analyzed away everything except the bare structure.
Read quote -
A little later, when breakfast was over and I had not yet gone up-stairs to my room, I had my first interview with Doctor Brandon, the famous alienist who was in charge of the case. I had never seen him before, but from the first moment that I looked at him I took his measure, almost by intuition. He was, I suppose, honest enough -- I have always granted him that, bitterly as I have felt toward him. It wasn't his fault that he lacked red blood in his brain, or that he had formed the habit, from long association with abnormal phenomena, of regarding all life as a disease. He was the sort of physician -- every nurse will understand what I mean -- who deals instinctively with groups instead of with individuals. He was long and solemn and very round in the face; and I hadn't talked to him ten minutes before I knew he had been educated in Germany, and that he had learned over there to treat every emotion as a pathological manifestation. I used to wonder what he got out of life -- what any one got out of life who had analyzed away everything except the bare structure.
Read quote -
No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not someday be antiquated.
Read quote -
A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away.
Read quote -
I waited and worked, and watched the inferior exalted for nearly thirty years; and when recognition came at last, it was too late to alter events, or to make a difference in living.
Read quote -
Women like to sit down with trouble - as if it were knitting.
Read quote -
No life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it.
Read quote -
The only difference between a Rut and a Grave are their dimensions.
Read quote -
If the Lord had appointed her to marriage, He would have arranged it all in His own good time.
Read quote -
That was the worst of being poor, you couldn't give the right things in sickness.
Read quote -
Many of the men who had come to the wilderness to practice religion appeared to have forgotten its true nature.
Read quote -
He was pursuing the dream of a free country, the dream of a country so vast that each man would have room to bury his dead on his own land.
Read quote -
It is only by knowing how little life has in store for us that we are able to look on the bright side and avoid disappointment.
Read quote -
I am inclined to believe that a man may be free to do anything he pleases if only he will accept responsibility for whatever he does.
Read quote -
I revolted from sentimentality, less because it was false than because it was cruel.
Read quote -
... I'm not going to lie down and let trouble walk over me.
Read quote