Top 40 Margaret Deland Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “As soon as you feel too old to do a thing, do it.”

— Margaret Deland

2. “One must desire something to be alive; perhaps absolute satisfaction is only another name for Death.”

— Margaret Deland

3. “There is a bond, it appears, between mother and child which endures as long as they do. It is independent of love; reason cannot weaken it; hate cannot destroy it.”

— Margaret Deland

4. “A pint can’t hold a quart – if it holds a pint it is doing all that can be expected of it.”

— Margaret Deland

5. “Every new truth begins in a shocking heresy.”

— Margaret Deland

6. “One must desire something to be alive.”

— Margaret Deland

7. “Twenty-five years ago, Christmas was not the burden that it is now; there was less haggling and weighing, less quid pro quo, less fatigue of body, less weariness of soul; and, most of all, there was less loading up with trash.”

— Margaret Deland

8. “Of all the bitter and heavy things in this sorry old world, the not being necessary is the bitterest and heaviest.”

— Margaret Deland

9. “A sneer is like a flame; it may occasionally be curative because it cauterizes, but it leaves a bitter scar.”

— Margaret Deland

10. “I have heard that a man might be his own lawyer, but you can’t be your own judge.”

— Margaret Deland

11. “The anger of slow, mild, loving people has a lasting quality that mere bad-tempered folk cannot understand.”

— Margaret Deland

12. “I’ve always thought the law ought to put on spectacles, it has mighty poor eyesight once in a while.”

— Margaret Deland

13. “Self-sacrifice which denies common sense is not a virtue. It’s a spiritual dissipation.”

— Margaret Deland

14. “Home is the best place to be sick in.”

— Margaret Deland

15. “Nobody who is somebody looks down on anybody.”

— Margaret Deland

16. “The insolence of time is like a blow in the face from an unseen enemy.”

— Margaret Deland

17. “Truth is like heat or light; its vibrations are endless, and are endlessly felt.”

— Margaret Deland

18. “I notice that when people have no sense of responsibility, you call them either criminals or geniuses.”

— Margaret Deland

19. “Books are like sapphires; they must be polished – polished! or else you insult your readers.”

— Margaret Deland

20. “Conscience that isn’t hitched up to common sense is a mighty dangerous thing.”

— Margaret Deland

21. “When did Youth ever thank Age for its wisdom?”

— Margaret Deland

22. “I’m not to blame for an old body, but I would be to blame for an old soul. An old soul is a shameful thing.”

— Margaret Deland

23. “Lawyers make their cake by cooking up other people’s troubles.”

— Margaret Deland

24. “Grief is the price Love pays for being in the same world with Death.”

— Margaret Deland

25. “Age, per se, may claim tenderness and pity, but not respect; that only comes when the years have brought humanity and wisdom and the experience that worketh hope.”

— Margaret Deland

26. “What I object to in Mother is that she wants me to think her thoughts. Apart from the question of hypocrisy, I prefer my own.”

— Margaret Deland

27. “Grandmother belongs to the generation of women who were satisfied to have men retain their vices, if they removed their hats.”

— Margaret Deland

28. “To talk over a quarrel, with its inevitable accompaniment of self-justification, is too much like handling cobwebs to be very successful.”

— Margaret Deland

29. “You can’t have genius without patience.”

— Margaret Deland

30. “A letter is a risky thing; the writer gambles on the reader’s frame of mind.”

— Margaret Deland

31. “Hearts don’t come when Reason whistles to ’em.”

— Margaret Deland

32. “There is no embarrassment quite like the embarrassment of listening to a person for whom one has a regard making a fool of himself.”

— Margaret Deland

33. “Real divorce takes place without a decree...”

— Margaret Deland

34. “It is useless to deny that, unless one has a genius for imparting knowledge, teaching is a drudgery.”

— Margaret Deland

35. “When two duties jostle each other, one of ’em isn’t a duty.”

— Margaret Deland

36. “The fact is, the secret of happiness is the sense of proportion...”

— Margaret Deland

37. “War is wicked, beause it is murder and hate. And it is foolish, because hate and murder can only destroy people’s bodies, not change their minds.”

— Margaret Deland

38. “There’s one thing that always interests me about you good people, not your certainty that the rest of us are swine, – no doubt we are, – but your certainty that your opinions are pearls.”

— Margaret Deland

39. “Absurdity is the one thing love can’t stand; it can overlook anything else, – coldness, or weakness, or viciousness, – but just be ridiculous and that’s the end of it!”

— Margaret Deland

40. “When it comes to bombshells, there are few that can be more effective than that small, flat, frail thing, a letter.”

— Margaret Deland

41. “I have no faith in a human critter who hasn’t one or two bad habits.”

— Margaret Deland

42. “There isn’t any virtue where there has never been any temptation.”

— Margaret Deland

43. “Isn’t there any statute of limitation in things spiritual? I don’t believe any large mind dwells on its sins, any more than on its virtues!”

— Margaret Deland

44. “If you are kind to an enemy, you cannot hate him.”

— Margaret Deland

45. “Convictions do not imply reasons.”

— Margaret Deland

46. “Fighting should be left to dogs and cats and chickens, who can’t reason.”

— Margaret Deland

47. “Age, with shamefaced relief, has learned the solvent quality of Time. It is this quality which makes possible the contemplation of certain embarrassing heavenly reunions...”

— Margaret Deland

48. “In connection with death, or birth, or love, modesty is only a rather puerile self-consciousness.”

— Margaret Deland

49. “Some time in our lives every man and woman of us, putting out our hands toward the stars, touch on either side our prison walls the immutable limitations of temperament.”

— Margaret Deland