There is a spirit in every home, a sort of composite spirit composed of the thoughts and feelings of the members of the family as a composite photograph is formed of the features of different individuals.
These times are too progressive. Everything has changed too fast. Railroads and telegraphs and kerosene and coal stoves — they’re good to have but the trouble is, folks get to depend on ’em.
When Pa was at home the gun always lay across those two wooden hooks above the door. … The gun was always loaded, and always above the door so that Pa could get it quickly and easily, any time he needed a gun.
This earthly life is a battle,’ said Ma. ‘If it isn’t one thing to contend with, it’s another. It always has been so, and it always will be. The sooner you make up your mind to that, the better off you are, and more thankful for your pleasures.
Her blue eyes were still beautiful, but they did not know what was before them, and Mary herself could never look through them again to tell Laura what she was thinking without saying a word.
Money hasn’t any value of its own; it represents the stored up energy of men and women and is really just someone’s promise to pay a certain amount of that energy.
