Lucy Maud Montgomery
A cold in the head in June is an immoral thing.Collection: June
Secrets are generally terrible. Beauty is not often hidden — only ugliness and deformity.Collection: Secret
I've always loved the night and I'll like lying awake and thinking over everything in life, past, present and to come. Especially to come.Collection: Lying
…I'm so thankful for friendship. It beautifies life so much.Collection: L'm Montgomery
My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.Collection: Life
What had seemed easy in imagination was rather hard in reality.Collection: Reality
People who are different from other people are always called peculiar,' said Anne.Collection: People
the little things in life often make more trouble than the big things.Collection: Things In Life
Tears don't hurt like the ache does.Collection: Hurt
Don't be very frightened, Marilla. I was walking the ridge-pole and I fell off. I suspect I have sprained my ankle. But, Marilla, I might have broken my neck. Let us look on the bright side of things.Collection: Broken
Matthew, much to his own surprise, was enjoying himself. Like most quiet folks he liked talkative people when they were willing to do the talking themselves and did not expect him to keep up his end of it.Collection: Talking
But if you call me Anne, please call me Anne with an 'e'.Collection: Green Gables
Our sacrifice is greater than his," cried Rilla passionately. "Our boys give only themselves. We give them.Collection: Sacrifice
Children can be the most cruel creatures alive. They have the herd instinct of prejudice against any outsider, and they are merciless in its indulgence.Collection: Children
You mayn't get the things themselves; but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them.Collection: Fun
I have a little brown cocoon of an idea that may possibly expand into a magnificent moth of fulfilment.Collection: Ideas
Nothing worth while is every easy come by.Collection: Easy
When I think something nice is going to happen I seem to fly right up on the wings of anticipation; and then the first thing I realize I drop down to earth with a thud. But really, Marilla, the flying part is glorious as long as it lasts. . . it's like soaring through a sunset. I think it almost pays for the thud.Collection: Nice
Anne: "But have you ever noticed one encouraging thing about me, Marilla? I never make the same mistake twice". Marilla: "I don't know as that's much benefit when you're always making new ones".Collection: Mistake
Here sat Marilla Cuthbert, when she sat at all, slightly distrustful of sunshine, which seemed to her too dancing and irresponsible a thing for a world which was meant to be taken seriously.Collection: Taken
Oh, but there's such a difference between saying a thing yourself and hearing other people say it,' wailed Anne. 'You may know a thing is so, but you can't help hoping other people don't quite think it is.Collection: Thinking
I'd write of people and places like I knew, and I'd make my characters talk everyday English; and I'd let the sun rise and set in the usual quiet way without much fuss over the fact. If I had to have villains at all, I'd give them a chance, Anne--I'd give them a chance. There are some terrible bad men the world, I suppose, but you'd have to go a long piece to find them...But most of us have got a little decency somewhere in us. Keep on writing, Anne.Collection: Writing
Which would you rather be if you had the choice--divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?Collection: Beautiful
I wonder if it will be—can be—any more beautiful than this,’ murmured Anne, looking around her with the loving, enraptured eyes of those to whom ‘home’ must always be the loveliest spot in the world, no matter what fairer lands may lie under alien stars.Collection: Beautiful
Have you ever noticed how many silences there are Gilbert? The silence of the woods....of the shore....of the meadows....of the night....of the summer afternoon. All different because the undertones that thread them are different.Collection: Summer
You'd find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair," said Anne reproachfully. "People who haven't red hair don't know what trouble is.Collection: Hair
Anne came dancing home in the purple winter twilight across the snowy places.Collection: Twilight
Nobody whom this war has touched will ever be happy again in quite the same way. But it will be a better happiness, I think, little sister - a happiness we've earned.Collection: War
I know I haven't much sense or sobriety, but I've got what is ever so much better — the knack of making people like me.Collection: People
…I'm sorry, and a little dissatisfied as well. Miss Stacy told me long ago that by the time I was twenty my character would be formed, for good or evil. I don't feel that it's what it should be. It's full of flaws.' 'So's everybody's,' said Aunt Jamesina cheerfully. 'Mine's cracked in a hundred places. Your Miss Stacy likely meant that when you are twenty your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction or 'tother, and would go on developing in that line.Collection: Sorry
I believe I've put forth a tiny soul-root into Kingsport soil this afternoon. I hope so. I hate to feel transplanted.Collection: Hate
Yes, it's beautiful,' said Gilbert, looking steadily down into Anne's uplifted face, 'but wouldn't it have been more beautiful still, Anne, if there had been no separation or misunderstanding . . . if they had come hand in hand all the way through life, with no memories behind them but those which belonged to each other?Collection: Beautiful
She looks just as music sounds, I think,' answered Anne.Collection: Thinking
It's fun to be almost grown up in some ways, but it's not the kind of fun I expected, Marilla. There's so much to learn and do and think that there isn't time for big words.Collection: Fun
But pearls are for tears, the old legend says," Gilbert had objected. "I'm not afraid of that. And tears can be happy as well as sad. My very happiest moments have been when I had tears in my eyes—when Marilla told me I might stay at Green Gables—when Matthew gave me the first pretty dress I ever had—when I heard that you were going to recover from the fever. So give me pearls for our troth ring, Gilbert, and I'll willingly accept the sorrow of life with its joy." -AnneCollection: Eye
People who haven’t red hair don’t know what trouble is.Collection: Hair
That's one splendid thing about such affairs — it's so lovely to look back to them.Collection: Lovely
There is no use in loving things if you have to be torn from them, is there? And it's so hard to keep from loving things, isn't it?Collection: Love
I'm always sorry when pleasant things end. Something still pleasanter may come after, but you can never be sure.Collection: Sorry
But the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you have to stop and that hurts.Collection: Hurt
Don't be led away by those howls about realism. Remember-pine woods are just as real as pigsties and a darn sight pleasanter to be in.Collection: Real
I'd rather look ridiculous when everybody else does than plain and sensible all by myself.Collection: Fashion
When I make up my mind to do a thing it stays made up.Collection: Mind
I don't like green Christmases. They're not green—they're just nasty faded browns and grays.Collection: Christmas
Cakes have such a terrible habit of turning out bad just when you especially want them to be good.Collection: Food
Good night, belovedest. Your sleep will be sweet if there is any influences in the wishes of your own.Collection: Good Night
Mrs. Cadbury: Tell me what you know about yourself. Anne Shirley: Well, it really isn't worth telling, Mrs. Cadbury... but if you let me tell you what I IMAGINE about myself you'd find it a lot more interesting.Collection: Interesting
But feeling is so different from knowing. My common sense tells me all you can say, but there are times when common sense has no power over me. Common nonsense takes possession of my soul.Collection: Knowing
The woods are never solitary--they are full of whispering, beckoning, friendly life. But the sea is a mighty soul, forever moaning of some great, unshareable sorrow, which shuts it up into itself for all eternity.Collection: Sea