Anne laughed.”I don’t want sunbursts or marble halls, I just want you.
And if you couldn’t be loved, the next best thing was to be let alone.
Gilbert, I’m afraid I’m scandalously in love with you.
You see,” she concluded miserably, “when I can call like that to him across space–I belong to him. He doesn’t love me–he never will–but I belong to him.
Why did dusk and fir-scent and the afterglow of autumnal sunsets make people say absurd things?
Life is worth living as long as there’s a laugh in it.
Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?
Well, we all make mistakes, dear, so just put it behind you. We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.
I don’t know, I don’t want to talk as much. (…) It’s nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one’s heart, like treasures. I don’t like to have them laughed at or wondered over.
Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.
I’ve done my best, and I begin to understand what is meant by ‘the joy of strife’. Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.
Gossip, as usual, was one-third right and two-thirds wrong.
The world looks like something God had just imaged for his own pleasure, doesn’t it?
…the sorrows God sent us brought comfort and strength with them, while the sorrows we brought on ourselves, through folly or wickedness, were by far the hardest to bear.
When you’ve learned to laugh at the things that should be laughed at, and not to laugh at those that shouldn’t, you’ve got wisdom and understanding.
It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.
Oh, Marilla, I thought I was happy before. Now I know that I just dreamed a pleasant dream of happiness. This is the reality.
The gods, so says the old superstition, do not like to behold too happy mortals. It is certain, at least, that some human beings do not.
Well, I don’t want to be anyone but myself, even if I go uncomforted by diamonds all my life,’ declared Anne. ‘I’m quite content to be Anne of Green Gables, with my string of pearl beads.
We mustn’t let next week rob us of this week’s joy.
Nobody with any real sense of humor *can* write a love story. . . . Shakespeare is the exception that proves the rule. (90-91)
The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must be begun here on earth.
Don’t you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back?
I suppose that’s how it looks in prose. But it’s very different if you look at it through poetry…and I think it’s nicer…’ Anne recovered herself and her eyes shone and her cheeks flushed… ‘to look at it through poetry.
Jane’s stories are too sensible. Then Diana puts too much murders into hers. She says most of the time she doesn’t know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get rid of them.” -Anne Shirley
Fancies are like shadows…you can’t cage them, they’re such wayward, dancing things.
You have the itch for writing born in you. It’s quite incurable. What are you going to do with it?
Don’t try to write anything you can’t feel – it will be a failure – ‘echoes nothing worth
It was not, of course, a proper thing to do. But then I have never pretended, nor will ever pretend, that Emily was a proper child. Books are not written about proper children. They would be so dull nobody would read them.
The p’int of good writing is to know when to stop.
Then Diana puts too many murders into [her stories]. She says most of the time she doesn’t know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get rid of them.
That’s one of the things we learn as we grow older — how to forgive. It comes easier at forty than it did at twenty.
Aunt Elizabeth said, ‘Do you expect to attend many balls, if I may ask?’ and I said, ‘Yes, when I am rich and famous.’ and Aunt Elizabeth said, ‘Yes, when the moon is made of green cheese.
Oh, this is the most TRAGICAL thing that ever happened to me!
I never hear about dear Mike. I wrote Ellen Greene and asked about him and she replyed and never mentioned Mike but told me all about her roomatism. As if I cared about her roomatism.
I am simply a ‘book drunkard.’ Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.
I hate to lend a book I love…it never seems quite the same when it comes back to me…
Our library isn’t very extensive,” said Anne, “but every book in it is a friend. We’ve picked our books up through the years, here and there, never buying one until we had first read it and knew that it belonged to the race of Joseph.
Blessings be the inventor of the alphabet, pen and printing press! Life would be–to me in all events–a terrible thing without books.
Fear is the original sin. Almost all of the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something.It is a cold slimy serpent coiling about you. It is horrible to live with fear and it is of all things degrading.
Fear is a vile thing, and is at the bottom of almost every wrong and hatred of the world.
True friends are always together in spirit. (Anne Shirley)
Oh, sometimes I think it is of no use to make friends. They only go out of your life after awhile and leave a hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came.
When twilight drops her curtain down And pins it with a star Remember that you have a friend Though she may wander far.
…I’m so thankful for friendship. It beautifies life so much.
Kindred spirits alone do not change with the changing years.
Even when I’m alone I have real good company — dreams and imaginations and pretendings. I like to be alone now and then, just to think over things and taste them. But I love friendships — and nice, jolly little times with people.
Thank goodness, we can choose our friends. We have to take our relatives as they are, and be thankful…
People who are different from other people are always called peculiar,’ said Anne.
It takes all sorts of people to make a world, as I’ve often heard, but I think there are some who could be spared,’ Anne told her reflection in the east gable mirror that night.
You may tire of reality but you never tire of dreams.
Listen to the trees talking in their sleep,’ she whispered, as he lifted her to the ground. ‘What nice dreams they must have!
Everybody has. It wouldn’t do for us to have all our dreams fulfilled. We would be as good as dead if we had nothing left to dream about.
That’s all the freedom we can hope for – the freedom to choose our prison.
After all, what could you expect from a pig but a grunt?
Oh”, she thought, “how horrible it is that people have to grow up-and marry-and change!
People told her she hadn’t changed much, in a tone which hinted they were surprised and a little disappointed she hadn’t.
Changes come all the time. Just as soon as things get really nice they change,’ she said with a sigh.
Changes ain’t totally pleasant but they’re excellent things… Two years is about long enough for things to stay exactly the same. If they stayed put any longer they might grow mossy.
Which would you rather be if you had the choice–divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?
Secrets are generally terrible. Beauty is not hidden–only ugliness and deformity.
Not lovelier. But a different kind of loveliness. There are so many kinds of loveliness.
Love! What a searing, torturing, intolerably sweet thing it was – this possession of body, soul and mind! With something at its core as fine and remote and purely spiritual as the tiny blue spark in the heart of the unbreakable diamond.
The body grows slowly and steadily but the soul grows by leaps and bounds. It may come to its full stature in an hour.
Anybody is liable to rheumatism in her legs, Anne. It’s only old people who should have rheumatism in their souls, though. Thanks goodness, I never have. When you get rheumatism in your soul you might as well go and pick out your coffin.
I have made up my mind that I will never marry. I shall be wedded to my art.
I think this story-writing business is the foolishest yet,” scoffed Marilla. “You’ll get a pack of nonsense into your heads and waste time that should be put to your lessons. Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse.
Nobody can keep on being angry if she looks into the heart of a pansy for a little while.
We resent the thought that anything can please us when someone we love is no longer here to share the pleasure with us, and we almost feel as if we were unfaithful to our sorrow when we find out interest in life returning to us.
Oh, sometimes I think it is of no use to make friends. They only go out of your life after a while and leave a hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came.
I wouldn’t want to marry anybody who was wicked, but I think I’d like it if he could be wicked and wouldn’t.
Oh, of course there’s a risk in marrying anybody, but, when it’s all said and done, there’s many a worse thing than a husband.
A woman cannot ever be sure of not being married till she is buried, Mrs. Doctor, dear, and meanwhile I will make a batch of cherry pies.
Don’t be fretting…about me marrying. Marrying’s a trouble and not marrying’s a trouble and I sticks to the trouble I knows.
I’m afraid concerts spoil people for everyday life.
You’ve all been so sure that life is good that I’ve never been able to disbelieve it. Never will be able to.
A house from which nobody ever went away without feeling better in some way. A house in which there was always laughter.
But I believe I rather like superstitious people. They lend color to life. Wouldn’t it be a rather drab world if everybody was wise and sensible . . . and good? What would we find to talk about?
That is one good thing about this world…there are always sure to be more springs.
I’m afraid of those cows,’ protested poor Dora, seeing a prospect of escape.’The very idea of your being scared of those cows,’ scoffed Davy. ‘Why, they’re both younger than you.
There isn’t any such thing as an ordinary life. (92)
Lovely thoughts came flying to meet me like birds. They weren’t my thoughts. I couldn’t think anything half so exquisite. They came from somewhere.
When I read that the flash came, and I took a sheet of paper. . .and I wrote on it: I, Emily Byrd Starr, do solemnly vow this day that I will climb the Alpine Path and write my name on the scroll of fame.
But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them, haven’t you?
Don’t be ridiculous, please.’The most insulting words in the world!
I can always get through to-day very nicely. It’s to-morrow I can’t live through
Don’t let a three-o’clock-at-night feeling fog your soul.
God’s in His heaven, alls right with the world’, whispered Anne softly.
Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive–it’s such an interesting world
…determined to enjoy her luxury of grief uncomforted.
Because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worth while.
It’s delightful when your imaginations come true, isn’t it?
Do you know what I think Mayflowers are, Marilla? I think they must be the souls of the flowers that died last summer, and this is their heaven.
I was very much provoked. Of course, I knew there are no fairies; but that needn’t prevent my thinking there is.
I guess ice cream is one of those things that are beyond imagination
I don’t say Valancy deliberately murdered these lovers as she outgrew them. One simply faded away as another came. Things are very convenient in this respect in Blue Castles.
I went up on the hill and walked about until twilight had deepened into an autumn night with a benediction of starry quietude over it. I was alone but not lonely. I was a queen in halls of fancy.
when you ARE imagining you might as well imagine something worth while
If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you’ll never be and you need not waste time in trying.
We are both going to pray that we may live together all our lives and die the same day.
I feel as if I had opened a book and found roses of yesterday sweet and fragrant, between its leaves.
Once upon a time–which, when you come to think of it, is reallythe only proper way to begin a story–the only way that reallysmacks of romance and fairyland–
I don’t want to talk as much,’ she said, denting her chin thoughtfully with her forefinger. ‘It’s nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one’s heart, like treasures.
She had never before minded being alone. Now she dreaded it. When she was alone now she felt so dreadfully alone.
The eastern sky above the firs was flushed faintly pink from the reflection of the west, and Anne was wondering dreamily if the spirit of color looked like that…
I guess you’ve got a spice of temper,” commented Mr. Harrison, surveying the flushed cheeks and indignant eyes opposite him. “It goes with hair like yours, I reckon
I ought to grow up successfully, and I’m sure it will be my own fault if I don’t. I feel it’s a great responsibility because I have only one chance. If I don’t grow up right I can’t go back and begin over again.
There’s such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I am such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn’t be half so interesting.
[Ilse] was suffering so keenly that she wanted to arraign the universe at the bar of her pain.
Well, hope for your thrilling career – but remember that if there is to be drama in your life somebody must pay the piper in the coin of suffering. If not you – then someone else.
It’s good advice, but I expect it will be hard to follow; good advice is apt to be, I think.
She looked like a head-on collision between a fashion plate and a nightmare.
We don’t know where we’re going, but isn’t is fun to go?
It’s the fools that make all the trouble in the world, not the wicked.
She was always at her best with him, with a delightful feeling of being understood. To love is easy and therefore common – but to understand – how rare it is!
To love is easy and therefore common – but to understand – how rare it is!
Look, do you see that poem?’ she said suddenly, pointing.
Steal not this book for fear of shameFor on it is the owners nameAnd when you die the Lord will sayWhere is the book you stole awayAnd when you say you do not knowThe Lord will say go down below.
Never on painter’s canvas livesThe charm of his fancy’s dream.
If you buy your experience it’s your own. So it’s no matter how much you pay for it.
We are never half so interesting when we have learned that language is given us to enable us to conceal our thoughts.
A woman who has a sense of humor possesses no refuge from the merciless truth about herself. She cannot think herself misunderstood. She cannot revel in self-pity. She cannot comfortably damn any one who differs from her.
I suppose all this sounds very crazy — all these terrible emotions always do sound foolish when we put them into our inadequate words. They are not meant to be spoken — only felt and endured.
Why should one hate you when you were so small? Could you be worth hating?
Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.
Never be silent with persons you love and distrust,” Mr. Carpenter had said once. “Silence betrays.
More than ever at that instant did she long for speech – speech that would conceal and protect where dangerous silence might betray.
Heaven must be very beautiful, of course, the Bible says so — but, Anne, it won’t be what I’ve been used to.
She isn’t like any of the girls I ever knew, or any of the girls I was myself.
When I don’t like the name of a place or a person I always imagine a new one and always think of them so. ” Anne of Green Gables
Some people are naturally good, you know, and others are not. I’m one of the others.
It’s lovely to be going home and know it’s home. I love green gables already, and I’ve never loved any place before. Oh, Marilla, I’m so happy.
I have got acquainted with Lofty John. Ilse is a great friend of his and often goes there to watch him working in his carpenter shop. He says he has made enough ladders to get to heaven without the priest but that is just his joke.
When weeds go to heaven, I suppose they will be flowers.
…And every day in heaven will be more beautiful than the one before it Davy,” assured Anne.
Mrs. Hammon told me that God made my hair red on purpose and I haven’t card for him since.
Well, one can’t get over the habit of being a liitle girl all at once.
I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I’ve never been able to believe it. I don’t believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage.
Good night, belovedest. Your sleep will be sweet if there is any influences in the wishes of your own.
Oh, I know I’m a great trial to you, Marilla,” said Anne repentantly. “I make so many mistakes. But then just think of all the mistakes I don’t make, although I might.
You must pay the penalty of growing-up, Paul. You must leave fairyland behind you.
It must be lovely to be grown up, Marilla, when just being treated as if you were is so nice…Well, anyway, when I grow up, I’m always going to talk to little girls as if they were, too, and I’ll never laugh when they use big words.
hat’s the worst of growing up, and I’m beginning to realize it. The things you wanted so much when you were a child don’t seem half so wonderful to you when you get them.
That’s the worst of growing up, and I’m beginning to realize it. The things you wanted so much when you were a child don’t seem half so wonderful to you when you get them
Don’t give up all your romance, Anne,” he whispered shyly, “a little bit is a good thing – not too much, of course, but keep a little of it, Anne, keep a little of it.
I never fancied cats much till I found the First Mate,” he remarked, to the accompaniment of the Mate’s tremendous purrs. “I saved his life, and when you’ve saved a creature’s life you’re bound to love it. It’s next thing to giving life.
And yet… you wouldn’t want it to stop hurting… you wouldn’t want to forget your little mother even if you could.
Isn’t it queer that the things we writhe over at night are seldom wicked things? Just humiliating ones.
But tonight is a gusty, hurrying night . . . even the clouds racing over the sky are in a hurry and the moonlight that gushes out between them is in a hurry to flood the world.
Oh, I don’t wonder babies always cry when they wake up in the night. So often I want to do it too.
…there was something about her that made you feel it was safe to tell her secrets.
Satirize wickedness if you must–but pity weakness.
If it’s IN you to climb you must — there are those who MUST lift their eyes to the hills — they can’t breathe properly in the valleys.
There’s such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I’m such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn’t be half so interesting.
If the bards of old the true has toldThe sirens have raven hair.But over the earth since art had birth,They paint the angels fair.
She came out of her reverie with a deep sigh and looked at him with a dreamy gaze of a soul that had been wandering afar, star-led.
I don’t like places or people either that haven’t any faults. I think that a truly perfect person would be very uninteresting.
Of course it’s better to be good. I know it ism but it’s sometimes so hard to believe a thing even when you know it.
Oh, Gilbert, don’t let’s ever grow too old and wise… no, not too old and silly for fairyland.
Some are born old maids, some achieve old maidenhood, and some have old maidenhood thrust upon them ,” parodied Miss Lavendar whimsically.
I love them, they are so nice and selfish. Dogs are TOO good and unselfish. They make me feel uncomfortable. But cats are gloriously human.
I don’t care a hang for any cat that hasn’t stripes.
A house isn’t a home without the ineffable contentment of a cat with its tail folded about its feet. A cat gives mystery, charm, suggestion.
…and he wasn’t reconciled to dying. Dora told him he was going to a better world. “Mebbe, mebbe,” says poor Ben, “but I’m sorter used to the imperfections of this one.
Mrs. Lynde says, ‘Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed.
Mrs Lynde says, “Blessed are they who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed.” But I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed.
I like to hear a storm at night. It is so cosy to snuggle down among the blankets and feel that it can’t get at you.
Pat wanted to comfort him for something she did not understand. She slipped her little hand into his…he had a warm pleasant hand. They walked home together so.
People who don’t like cats always seem to think there is some peculiar virtue in not liking them.
She suddenly found herself laughing without bitterness.
Isn’t that a view worth looking at? Nice and far from the marketplace, ain’t it? No buying and selling and getting gain. You don’t have to pay anything- all that sea and sky free- ‘without money and without price.
It is ever so much easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable.
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.
The ghosts of things that never happened are worse than the ghosts of things that did.
…a little “appreciation” sometimes does quite as much good as all the conscientious “bringing up” in the world.
Who would endure life if it were not for the hope of death?
Look at that sea, girls–all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn’t enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.
March came in that winter like the meekest and mildest of lambs, bringing days that were crisp and golden and tingling, each followed by a frosty pink twilight which gradually lost itself in an elfland of moonshine.
Stop a bit and think it over. There do be some knots mighty aisy to tie but the untying is a cat of a different brade.
Just to love! She did not ask to be loved. It was rapture enough just to sit there beside him in silence, alone in the summer night in the white splendor of moonshine, with the wind blowing down on them out of the pine woods.
Today has been a day dropped out of June into April.
I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.
I’m really a very happy, contented little person in spite of my broken heart.
Well, I should like to see you go to college, Anne, but if you never do, don’t grow discontented about it. We make our own lives wherever we are, after all… college can only help us do it more easily.
What I want to get out of my college course is some knowledge of the best way of living life and doing the most and best with it. I want to learn to understand and help other people and myself.
Gilbert put his arm about them. ‘Oh, you mothers!’ he said. ‘You mothers! God knew what He was about when He made you.
Most young men are such bores. They haven’t lived long enough to learn that they are not the wonders to the world they are to their mothers.
If you’ve brains it’s better than beauty – brains last, beauty doesn’t.
Jimmy Murray, you are an ass,’ said Aunt Ruth, angrily.’Well, we’re cousins,’ agreed Cousin Jimmy pleasantly.
You noticed that I wore this outfit twice? Why, the only thing you wear twice is a sour expression.
I don’t believe Old Nick can be so very ugly,’ said Aunt Jamesina reflectively. ‘He wouldn’t do so much harm if he was. I always think of him as a rather handsome gentleman.
It’s the worst kind of cruelty — the thoughtless kind. You can’t cope with it.
A suffering or tortured animal always filled her with such a surge of sympathy that it lifted her clean out of herself.
The trouble with you people is that you don’t laugh enough.
What’s the matter with you, Penny? You’re not as good looking as you generally believe you are.
Even eighty-odd is sometimes vulnerable to vanity.
Well, it all comes to this, there’s no use trying to live in other people’s opinions. The only thing to do is to live in our own.