black
grey
blue
red
brown
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I think that love is more like a light that you carry. At first childish happiness keeps it lighted and after that romance. Then motherhood lights it and then duty . . . and maybe after that sorrow.

Bess Streeter Aldrich

Except for our higher order of minds we are like the little moles under the earth carrying out blindly the work of digging, thinking our own dark passage-ways constitute all there is to the world.
BESS STREETER ALDRICH

Dark Order Thinking
Junior was eleven. The statement is significant. There are a few peevish people in the world who believe that all eleven-year-old boys ought to be hung. Others, less irritable, think that gently chloroforming them would seem more humane.
BESS STREETER ALDRICH

Believe Boys Couple
They are the most painful tears in the world … the tears of the aged … for they come from dried beds where the emotions have long burned low.
BESS STREETER ALDRICH

Age Emotion Long Tears
thoughts are acrobats, agile and quite often untrustworthy.
BESS STREETER ALDRICH

Acrobats Quite Untrustworthy
In 1846 the prairie town of Oak River existed only in a settler’s dream.
BESS STREETER ALDRICH

Book Dream Rivers
not all clever words are true. … And inversely most things that are true are not clever.
BESS STREETER ALDRICH

Clever Cleverness Inversely
You wouldn’t think that sorrow could be a light, would you, dearie? But it can. And then after that, service lights it. Yes. . . . I think that is what love is to a woman . . . a lantern in her hand.
BESS STREETER ALDRICH

Hand Love Sorrow Woman
The greatest antidote in the world for grief is work, and the necessity of work.
BESS STREETER ALDRICH

Antidote Grief World
There is no division nor subtraction in the heart-arithmetic of a good mother. There are only addition and multiplication.
BESS STREETER ALDRICH

Division Heart Mother
Sometime in their lives, everybody wanted to go home.
BESS STREETER ALDRICH

Home Sometimes Wanted
It was true, she thought, that the big things awe us but the little things touch us.
BESS STREETER ALDRICH

Bigs Little Things
Love is the light that you see by.
BESS STREETER ALDRICH

Light Love See
Katherine it was who took upon herself the complete charge of [Junior’s] speech. Not an insignificant “have went” nor an infinitesimal
BESS STREETER ALDRICH

Home Mother Running
Things last so much longer than people.
BESS STREETER ALDRICH

Lasts Longer People
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.
BESS STREETER ALDRICH

Christmas Song Xmas
Mrs. Schneiderman’s theory of life was that earth held no sorrow that food could not heal.
BESS STREETER ALDRICH

Earth Food Sorrow