Top 40 Maud Hart Lovelace Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You might as well learn right now, you two, that the poorest guide you can have in life is what people will say.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

2. “It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

3. “Good things come, but they’re never perfect; are they? You have to twist them into something perfect.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

4. “The most important part of religion isn’t in any church. It’s down in your own heart. Religion is in your thoughts, and in the way you act from day to day, in the way you treat other people. It’s honesty, and unselfishness, and kindness. Especially kindness.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

5. “One strain could call up the quivering expectancy of Christmas Eve, childhood, joy and sadness, the lonely wonder of a star.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

6. “The wastes of snow on the hill were ghostly in the moonlight. The stars were piercingly bright.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

7. “In silence the three of them looked at the sunset and thought about God.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

8. “Muster your wits: stand in your own defense.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

9. “Was life always like that? she wondered. A game of hide and seek in which you only occasionally found the person you wanted to be?”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

10. “Isn’t it mysterious to begin a new journal like this? I can run my fingers through the fresh clean pages but I cannot guess what the writing on them will be.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

11. “You have two numbers in your age when you are ten. It’s the beginning of growing up.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

12. “Betsy. The great war is on but I hope ours is over. Please come home. Joe.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

13. “I’m finished with something, but I’m not beginning anything. That’s wrong. When you finish something, you ought always to begin something new.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

14. “The silence in the room had width, height, depth, mass and substance.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

15. “We’re growing up and I don’t like it,” said Tacy, as they say at Heinz’s later, drinking coffee.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

16. “Sometimes the west showed clouds like tiny pink feathers; sometimes it showed purple mountains and green lakes; sometimes the clouds were scarlet with gold around the edges. Betsy.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

17. “When there are boys you have to worry about how you look, and whether they like you, and why they like another girl better, and whether they’re going to ask you to something or other. It’s a strain.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

18. “And then we’ll go to Tiffany’s and get you a ring. And then – ” he turned swiftly to look into her fade – ” when can we get married?”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

19. “Thoughts are such fleet magic things. Betsy’s thoughts swept a wide arc while Uncle Keith read her poem aloud. She thought of Julia learning to sing with Mrs. Poppy. She thought of Tib learning to dance. She thought of herself and Tacy and Tib going into their ’teens. She even thought of Tom and Herbert and of how, by and by, they would be carrying her books and Tacy’s and Tib’s up the hill from high school.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

20. “She thought of the library, so shining white and new; the rows and rows of unread books; the bliss of unhurried sojourns there and of going out to a restaurant, alone, to eat.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

21. “Then he kissed her. Betsy didn’t believe in letting boys kiss you. She thought it was silly to be letting first this boy and then that one kiss you, when it didn’t mean a thing. But it was wonderful when Joe Willard kissed her. And it did mean a thing.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

22. “After all, you couldn’t go through life rolling your friendships into one gigantic snowball. You wanted different kinds of friendships, with different kinds of people.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

23. “A house with nothing old in it seems – unseasoned.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

24. “There was nothing like a picnic! she reflected. If you were happy, it made you happier. If you were unhappy, it blew your troubles away.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

25. “She tried to act as though it were nothing to go to the library alone. But her happiness betrayed her. Her smile could not be restrained, and it spread from her tightly pressed mouth, to her round cheeks, almost to the hair ribbons tied in perky bows over her ears.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

26. “Why do you have to study together?” Mr. Ray asked. “When I was a boy we didn’t study in droves. And what help is all the fudge?” “Nourishment, Papa, nourishment,” Betsy explained. “We need strength.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

27. “Betsy returned to her chair, took off her coat and hat, opened her book and forgot the world again.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

28. “Joe Willard turned from his study of the trees beyond the window and raised his hand. ‘Yes, Joe?’ Mr. Gaston said, changing his tone. ‘It is my opinion sir, that apple blossoms are pink.’ Mr. Gaston was silent, stunned. ‘Pinkish, rather.’ Joe continued. ‘I think Betsy’s word ‘rosy’ is excellent. They’re colored just enough to make the effect rosy.′ The silence in the room had width, height, depth, mass and substance.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

29. “Did he know that she was so dissatisfied with herself that she was always pretending to be different? Probably he did, and despised her for it. More than anyone she knew, Joe Willard was always, fearlessly, himself.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

30. “But perhaps people who liked to write aways made lists! Just for the fun of it.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

31. “They always ate and made tea on the alcohol lamp before going to bed. This was quite in the German tradition, Tilda said. Germans in their homes ate six meals a day: breakfast, second breakfast, dinner, afternoon coffee, supper and in the evening tea or beer with sandwiches and kuchen. Betsy, in the cherry-red bathrobe, and Tilda in a blue one, feasted merrily.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

32. “Julia was as happy as Betsy was, almost. One nice thing about Julia was that she rejoiced in other people’s luck.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

33. “We’ll just have to find more flowers in the spring. That’s when they bloom, tra la.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

34. “You don’t grow up, she reasoned now, until you begin to evaluate yourself, to recognize your good traits and acknowledge that you have a few faults.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

35. “Betsy dreamed about going away from Deep Valley, but she didn’t for a moment suspect that around a bend in her Winding Hall of Fate a journey was actually waiting.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

36. “We’re growing up,” Betsy said aloud. She wasn’t even sure she liked it. But it happened, and then it wasn’t irrevocable. There was nothing you could do about it except try and see that you grew up into the kind of human being you wanted to be. “I’d like to be a fine one,” Betsy thought quickly and urgently.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

37. “Some characters become your friends for life. That’s how it was for me with Betsy and Tacy. – JUDY BLUME.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

38. “And yet, even as she spoke, she knew that she did not wish to come back. not to stay, not to live. She loved the little yellow cottage more than she loved any place on earth. but she was through with it except in her memories.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

39. “Our lives can hold just so much. If they’re filled with one thing, they can’t be filled with another. We ought to do a lot of thinking about what we want to fill them with.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

40. “How does a girl act with boys, exactly?” Tacy asked. “Oh,” said Betsy airily, “you just curl your hair and use a lot of perfume and act plagued when they tease you.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

41. “Three times! Three dull blows at Betsy’s heart. He must have ’phoned her twice before he came over to the Rays, and probably once after he left. She couldn’t remember that Tony had ever ’phoned her. He wasn’t a telephone addict as some of the boys and most of the girls were.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

42. “All that kneeling down and getting up, kneeling down and getting up! But I can stand it if you can,” Mr. Ray grumbled to his wife.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

43. “In the little yellow cottage which had once been the Ray house, lights were shining. It could almost have been home still. Betsy and Tacy could almost have been children again. “I wish I still lived there,” said Betsy, hugging Tacy, partly from love and partly from cold. “It’s such trouble to grow up.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace