Quotes from Daddy-Long-Legs

Have you ever read the book Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster? It's a simple yet delightful story, told primarily through the letters of the main character. I first read it when I was about 12-years-old and since then it's been one of my go-to stories when I want an easy and quick pick-me-up read. Here are some of my favorite snippets from the letters in the book:

"I'd love pretty hats and things, but I mustn't mortgage the future to pay for them."

"In the country, especially, there are such a lot of entertaining things. I can walk over everybody's land and look at everybody's view, and dabble in everybody's brook; and enjoy it just as much as though I owned the land - and with no taxes to pay!"

"One can't help thinking what a colorless life a man is forced to lead, when one reflects that chiffon and Venetian point and hand embroidery and Irish crochet are to him mere empty words. Whereas a woman - whether she is interested in babies or microbes or husbands or poetry or servants or parallelograms or gardens or Plato or bridge - is fundamentally and always interested in clothes."

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

"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."

"It's a very bewildering matter to get educated in five branches at once.
" 'The test of true scholarship,' say Chemistry Professor, 'is a painstaking passion for detail.'
" 'Be careful not to keep your eyes glued to detail,' says History Professor. 'Stand far enough away to get a perspective on the whole.'
"You can see with what nicety we have to trim our sails between chemistry and history. I like the historical method best. If I say that William the Conqueror came over in 1492 and Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1100 or 1066 or whenever it was, that's a mere detail that the Professor overlooks."

"It isn't the great big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones - I've discovered the secret to happiness and that is to live in the now. Not to be forever regretting the past, or anticipating the future, but to get the most that you can out of this very instant."