Top 40 Elizabeth George Speare Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “What a pity every child couldn’t learn to read under a willow tree...”

— Elizabeth George Speare

2. “There is no escape if love is not there.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

3. “It is the hate that is the enemy. Not men. Hate does not die with killing. It only springs up a hundredfold. The only thing stronger than hate is love.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

4. “Because they have never tried to get to know her. People are afraid of things they don’t understand.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

5. “How right- how incredibly, utterly right- and how impossible!”

— Elizabeth George Speare

6. “Was it possible that only love could bend the bow of bronze?”

— Elizabeth George Speare

7. “There was something irresistible about popcorn.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

8. “If you ask me, it’s all that schooling. It takes the fun out of life, being cooped up like that day after day... Books, now that’s different. There’s nothing like a book to keep you company of a long voyage.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

9. “She snatched at the dream that had comforted her for so long. It was faded and thin, like a letter too often read.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

10. “Tis a strange thing, that the only friends I have I found in the same way, lying flat in the meadows, crying as if their hearts would break.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

11. “From that first moment, in a way she could never explain, the Meadows claimed her and made her their own.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

12. “Hannah’s magic cure for every ill,” Nat had said. “Blueberry cake and a kitten.” Kit smiled to see it working its charm on Prudence. But there was an invisible ingredient that made the cure unfailing. The Bible name for it was love.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

13. “All the way up the river she’s been holding back somehow, waiting. Now you’ll both have to wait. I’m not going to disappoint her, Kit. When I take you on board the Witch, it’s going to be for keeps.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

14. “The impression of strength came from an extraordinary vitality that seemed to pulse in the very air around him.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

15. “The two boys stood and looked at each other. There was no amusement and no scorn in Attean’s eyes. How very strange, Matt thought. After all the brave deeds he had dreamed of doing to win this boy’s respect, he had gained it at last by doing nothing, just by staying here and refusing to leave.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

16. “The Messiah is not imagination. It’s the truth. It is promised.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

17. “Then, unbelievably, out of the mist came the miracle. First two points of mast, then sails, transparent and wraithlike in the fog, then, as Kit strained her eyes, the looming hull, the prow, and the curved tail of a fish. The Dolphin! Glory be to heaven! The most beautiful sight in the world! The Dolphin, moving down toward Wright’s Island on a steady breeze.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

18. “A man’s first loyalty is to the soil he stands on.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

19. “I can still see the green feathers if I look hard enough. But they’ve done their best to make you into a sparrow, haven’t they?”

— Elizabeth George Speare

20. “The one small room the house contained was scoured as a seashell. There was a table, a chest, a bedstead with a faded quilt, a spinning wheel, and a small loom. A few ancient kettles hung about the clean-swept hearth. From a square of sunlight on the floor an enormous yellow cat opened one eye to look at them.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

21. “If only I could be here alone, without Judith or anyone, she thought with longing. Someday I am going to come back to this place, when there is time just to stand still and look at it. How often she would come back she had no way of foreseeing, nor could she know that never, in the months to come, would the Meadows break the promise they held for her at this moment, a promise of peace and quietness and of comfort for a troubled heart.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

22. “She saw now that she could not tell him about the books she had loved any more than she could make him see the palm trees swaying under a brilliant blue sky.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

23. “The girl looked about her. “’ Tis a pretty room,” she said without thinking, and then wondered how that could be, when it was so plain and bare. Perhaps it was only the sunlight on boards that were scrubbed smooth and white, or perhaps it was the feeling of peace that lay across the room as tangibly as the bar of sunshine.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

24. “I have no word of yours to assure me that our brief friendship held for you the same significance it held for me, but I must go on believing so. Every hope of the future is meaningless unless I have faith that you and I will share it together.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

25. “There was the Dolphin coming up the river with all her sails. The curving tail of the prow was chipped and dull, the hull was battered and knobby with barnacles, the canvas dark and weathered, yet how beautiful she was! In.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

26. “He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

27. “As Kit reached the part about the schoolmaster and his cane, to her amazement a rusty chuckle interrupted her. Hannah’s face had crumpled into a thousand gleeful wrinkles.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

28. “A sudden joyful hope sprang into Mart’s mind.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

29. “He had envied Attean his free, unhampered life in the forest, and the boisterous comradeship in the village.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

30. “She and Prudence sat on a cool grassy carpet. A pale green curtain of branches just brushed the grasses and threw a filigree of shadows, as delicate as the wrought silver, on the child’s face.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

31. “Tis so beautiful – flowers every day of the year. You can always smell them in the air, even out to sea.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

32. “She rolled over and stretched, blinking up at the blue sky. The tips of the long grasses swished gently in the breeze. The hot sun pressed down on her so that she felt hot and empty. Slowly, the meadow began to fulfill its promise.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

33. “No, I have not asked Jesus to join us. All I hope and long for now is that he will ask me to join him.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

34. “For Prudence was an entirely different child from the woebegone shrinking creature who had stood in the roadway outside the school. The tight little bud that was the real Prudence had steadily opened its petals in the sunshine of Kit’s friendship and Hannah’s gentle affection.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

35. “The dress that hung close to her head, waiting for the first rays of the sun to light it into beauty, symbolized the wonder of the past few days.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

36. “Yes, I do think William is serious. But you don’t need to be worried, dear. No one is going to hurry you, least of all William himself. He is a very fine young man. Of course you feel like strangers now. But I think you’ll find sufficient to talk about before long.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

37. “The man did not even hear her. His eyes had gone straight to Mercy where she sat by the hearth, and her own eyes stared back, enormous in her white face. Then with a hoarse, wordless sigh, John Holbrook stumbled across the room, and went down on his knees with his head in Mercy’s lap.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

38. “Matt thought, as though he couldn’t count the weeks for himself.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

39. “THERE WILL BE no Thanksgiving this week,” announced Matthew when he came home at noontime the next day. “It seems we have no authority here in Connecticut to declare our own holidays. His Excellency, the new governor, will declare a Thanksgiving when it pleases him.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

40. “Miriam felt astonished at herself. It was a new thing for her to step out so independently. Somehow, in the past month a tough little root of determination had been growing in her. Whether it was strong enough to support the desperate plan she had undertaken she would soon find out.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

41. “My boy,” he said quietly, “we have not forgotten. We feel as you do. In his heart every Jew grieves at our captivity. We have need of patriotism like yours. But we have need also of patience. We must not say we cannot endure what God in His judgment has visited upon us.” “But how long – must we endure it for ever?” “God has not spoken His final word. Until He does, it is our part to endure.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

42. “Beside the plain blue homespun and white linen which modestly clothed Aunt Rachel and Judith, Kit’s flowered silk gave her the look of some vivid tropical bird lighted by mistake on a strange shore.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

43. “Tell them the truth if you like,” responded Kit airily, knowing quite well that Judith, for all her disapproval, would never give her away. The common bond of just being young together in that household was strong enough for that.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

44. “Day after day Matt tramped the woods alone, trying to shake the doubts that walked beside him like his own shadow.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

45. “I just wish it hadn’t happened four days before Thanksgiving. It’s going to spoil the holiday to have everyone so gloomy.”

— Elizabeth George Speare

46. “There was something strange about this country of America, something that they all seemed to share and understand and she did not.”

— Elizabeth George Speare