Top 60 Jean Webster Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “It isn’t the big pleasures that count the most; it’s making a great deal out of the little ones.”

— Jean Webster

2. “I believe absolutely in my own free will and my own power to accomplish – and that is the belief that moves mountains.”

— Jean Webster

3. “Thank heaven I don’t inherit God from anybody! I am free to make mine up as I wish Him. He’s kind and sympathetic and imaginative and forgiving and understanding – and He has a sense of humor.”

— Jean Webster

4. “And if I ever have any children of my own, no matter how unhappy I may be, I am not going to let them have any cares until they grow up.”

— Jean Webster

5. “She was by nature a sunny soul.”

— Jean Webster

6. “I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other people’s places. It makes them kind and sympathetic and understanding.”

— Jean Webster

7. “Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh- I really think that requires spirit!”

— Jean Webster

8. “Everybody likes a few surprises; it’s a perfectly natural human craving.”

— Jean Webster

9. “The world is full of happiness, and plenty to go round, if you are only willing to take the kind that comes your way.”

— Jean Webster

10. “I think that every one, no matter how many troubles the may have when he grows up, ought to have a happy childhood to look back upon. And if I ever have any children of my own, no matter how unhappy I may be, I am not going to let them have any cares until they grow up.”

— Jean Webster

11. “I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skilfully and fairly as I can. If I lose, I am going to shrug my shoulders and laugh – also if I win.”

— Jean Webster

12. “I hate the moonlight because it’s beautiful and he isn’t here to see it with me.”

— Jean Webster

13. “Half of the time I don’t know what they’re talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that everyone but me has shared. I’m a foreigner in the world and I don’t understand the language.”

— Jean Webster

14. “It is funny how certain places get connected with certain people, and you never go back without thinking of them.”

— Jean Webster

15. “Youth has nothing to do with birthdays, only with ALIVEDNESS of spirit, so even if your hair is grey, Daddy, you can still be a boy.”

— Jean Webster

16. “I like to pretend that you belong to me, just to play with the idea, but of course I know you don’t. I’m alone, really – with my back to the wall fighting the world – and I get sort of gaspy when I think about it. I put it out of my mind, and keep on pretending; but don’t you see, Daddy?”

— Jean Webster

17. “Getting an education is an awfully wearing process!”

— Jean Webster

18. “Perhaps when two people are exactly in accord, and always happy when together and lonely when apart, they ought not to let anything in the world stand between them.”

— Jean Webster

19. “I have a terrible wanderthirst; the very sight of a map makes me want to put on my hat and take an umbrella and start. I shall see before I die the palms and temples of the South.”

— Jean Webster

20. “I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination.”

— Jean Webster

21. “One does not miss what one has never had.”

— Jean Webster

22. “Don’t let politeness interfere with truth.”

— Jean Webster

23. “Dear Daddy-Long-Legs, I meant to write to you before and thank you for your Christmas cheque, but life in the McBride household is very absorbing, and I don’t seem able to find two consecutive minutes to spend at a desk. I.”

— Jean Webster

24. “It’s much more entertaining to live books than to write them.”

— Jean Webster

25. “Whatever sky’s above me, I’ve a heart for any fate.”

— Jean Webster

26. “It isn’t the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a crises and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh – I really think that requires SPIRIT.”

— Jean Webster

27. “She never lets ideas interrupt the easy flow of her conversation.”

— Jean Webster

28. “I stood alone in the winter twilight, and I took a deep breath of clear cold air, and I felt beautifully, wonderfully, electrically free.”

— Jean Webster

29. “That is the way Connecticut goes, in a series of Marcelle waves; and Lock Willow Farm is just on the crest of one wave. The barns used to be across the road where they obstructed the view, but a kind flash of lightning came from heaven and burnt them down.”

— Jean Webster

30. “Her mother was a Rutherford. The family came over in the ark, and were connected by marriage with Henry the VIII. On her father’s side they date back further than Adam. On the topmost branches of her family tree there’s a superior breed of monkeys with very fine silky hair and extra long tails.”

— Jean Webster

31. “That is – you are not to thank him for the money; he doesn’t care to have that mentioned, but you are to write a letter telling of the progress in your studies and the details of your daily life.”

— Jean Webster

32. “The room marked with a cross is not where the murder was committed, but the one that I occupy.”

— Jean Webster

33. “But now – I shall have a Great Big Worry all the rest of my life. Whenever you are away from me I shall be thinking of all the automobiles that can run over you, or the sign-boards that can fall on your head, or the dreadful, squirmy germs that you may be swallowing.”

— Jean Webster

34. “It seemed like an unachievable goal for one person to bring sunshine to one hundred little faces when what they need is a mother apiece.”

— Jean Webster

35. “The awful thing about a vacation is that the moment it begins your happiness is already clouded by its approaching end.”

— Jean Webster

36. “It seems to me that a man who can think straight along for forty-seven years without changing a single idea ought to be kept in a cabinet as a curiosity.”

— Jean Webster

37. “We all have a collection of memories that we would happily lose, but somehow those are just the ones that insist upon sticking.”

— Jean Webster

38. “It makes me almost hope I’m not a genius; they must be very wearying to have about – and awfully destructive to the furniture.”

— Jean Webster

39. “I don’t know why I am in such a reminiscent mood except that spring and the reappearance of toads always awakens the old acquisitive instinct. The only thing that keeps me from starting a collection is the fact that no rule exists against it.”

— Jean Webster

40. “I came up with a pen and tablet hoping to write an immortal short story, but I’ve been having a dreadful time with my heroine – I CAN’T make her behave as I want her to behave; so I’ve abandoned her for the moment, and am writing to you.”

— Jean Webster

41. “Seseorang tidak akan merindukan apa yang tidak dia miliki, tapi sungguh sulit rasanya hidup tanpa benda-benda tertentu setelah dia terbiasa memilikinya.”

— Jean Webster

42. “She was worshiping under the blue sky, to the jubilant chanting of the birds.”

— Jean Webster

43. “Eleven pages – this is a letter! Have courage. I’m going to stop.”

— Jean Webster

44. “When you get accustomed to people or places or ways of living, and then have them snatched away, it does leave an awfully empty, gnawing sort of sensation.”

— Jean Webster

45. “The more I study men, the more I realize that they are nothing in the world but boys grown too big to be spankable.”

— Jean Webster

46. “The mere idea that you are not in a place for the rest of your life gives you an awfully unstable feeling. That’s why trial marriages would never work. You’ve got to feel you’re in a thing irrevocably and forever in order to buckle down and really put your whole mind into making it a success.”

— Jean Webster

47. “It’s nice to look forward to, isn’t it – a life of work and play and little daily adventures side by side with somebody you love?”

— Jean Webster

48. “Just such a letter as you would write to your parents if they were living. ‘These.”

— Jean Webster

49. “They are so accustomed to the feeling that their senses are deadened to it;.”

— Jean Webster

50. “You must remember that you cannot form your character in a moment, my dear. Character is a plant of slow growth and the seeds must be planted early.”

— Jean Webster