Top 35 Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

2. “It is not good for all our wishes to be filled; through sickness we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, the value of food; through exertion, the value of rest.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

3. “There is no human relationship more intimate than that of nurse and patient, one in which the essentials of character are more rawly revealed.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

4. “Some people think that doctors and nurses can put scrambled eggs back into the shell.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

5. “Oh, yes, of course I like music, too. Very much. It’s so pleasant of an evening, especially when made by your friends at home. I often say I like it better than cards. Though I must say I do like a good game of bridge.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

6. “Life takes hold of us with strong hands and makes us greater than we thought.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Featured in: Strong Quotes

7. “On New Year’s Day every calendar, large and small, has the same number of dates. But we soon learn that the years are of very different lengths.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

8. “Freedom is not worth fighting for if it means no more than license for everyone to get as much as he can for himself.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

9. “You think religion is what’s inside a little building filled with pretty lights from stained glass windows. But it’s not. It’s wings! Wings!”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

10. “Everyone bowed to that unwritten law of family life which ordains that, in the long run, everyone submerges his personal preference in the effort to conform to that of the member of the circle who complains most loudly and is most difficult to satisfy.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

11. “Vermont is the only place in America where I ever hear thrift spoken of with respect.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

12. “Professional psychologists seem to think that they are the only people who make sense out of human actions. The rest of us know that everybody tries to do just this. What else is gossip?”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

13. “Not a thing had happened the way she had planned, no, not a single thing! But it seemed to her she had never been so happy in her life.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

14. “History is worth reading when it tells us truly what the attitude toward life was in the past.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Featured in: Reading Quotes

15. “Libraries are the vessels in which the seed corn for the future is stored.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

16. “Compared with more emotional types, Vermonters seem to have few passions. But those they have are great and burning. The greatest is their conviction that without freedom human life is not worth living.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

17. “One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it’s such a nice change from being young.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

18. “What a fearfully distracting, perplexing and heart-searching business it is to live.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

19. “There’s no healthy life possible without some sensual feeling between the husband and wife, but there’s nothing in the world more awful than married life when it’s the only common ground.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

20. “What is life, but one long risk?”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

21. “It wasn’t because Eva had not tried her best. She had nearly killed herself trying. But she had been like a gifted mathematician set to paint a picture.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

22. “If we could learn how to utilize all the intelligence and patent good will children are born with, instead of ignoring much of it – why – there might be enough to go around! There might be enough to solve our alarming human problems, to put an end to poverty, to stop waging wars.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

23. “No Vermont town ever let anybody in it starve.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

24. “Eva had passionate love and devotion to give them, but neither patience nor understanding. There was no sacrifice in the world which she would not joyfully make for her children except to live with them.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

25. “Never since the dawn of human history, as far as I can find out, did people long settled in any region give a friendly welcome to newcomers. One of the disagreeable traits of our human nature seems to be to dislike on sight people who come later than the first settlers.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

26. “The actions of a human being, even of fifteen months of age, may not be without significance to a sympathetic eye.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

27. “I declare! Sometimes it seems to me that every time a new piece of machinery comes into the door some of our wits fly out the window!”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

28. “Taking somebody’s sacrifices is like taking counterfeit money. You’re only the poorer.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

29. “The minute your group gets so big you don’t know anybody in it and they don’t know you, there’s hell to pay.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

30. “Father sticks to it that anything that promises to pay too much can’t help being risky.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

31. “What’s the use of inventing a better system as long as there just aren’t enough folks with sense to go around?”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

32. “The matter was that never before had she known what she was doing in school. She had always thought she was there to pass from one grade to another, and she was ever so startled to get a glimpse of the fact that she was there to learn how to read and write and cipher and generally use her mind, so she could take care of herself when she came to be grown up.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

33. “Almost anything is enough to keep alive someone who wishes nothing for himself but time to write music...”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

34. “I’m as fixed in my opinion as the man who thought he was a hard-boiled egg.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

35. “I never did,′ said the little girl, but in a less doubtful tone than she had ever used with that phrase so familiar to her. A dim notion was growing in her mind that the fact that she had never done a thing was no proof that she couldn’t.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher

36. “You can’t wish a body any worse luck than to get what he wants.”

— Dorothy Canfield Fisher