She did not care very much for other little girls, but if she had plenty of books she could console herself. She liked books more than anything else, and was, in fact, always inventing stories of beautiful things and telling them to herself.
I do not know whether many people realize how much more than is ever written there really is in a story – how many parts of it are never told – how much more really happened than there is in the book one holds in one’s hand and pores over.
Adversity tries people, and mine has tried you and proved how nice you are.
It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of climbing roses which were so thick that they were matted together.
I wish I was friends with things,” he said at last, “but I’m not. I never had anything to be friends with, and I can’t bear people.
It was a mere matter of seeing common things together and exchanging common speech concerning them, but each was so strongly conscious of the other that no sentence could seem wholly impersonal. There are times when the whole world is personal to a mood whose intensity seems a reason for all things. Words are of small moment when the mere sound of a voice makes an unreasonable joy.
Dickon says anything will understand if you’re friends with it for sure, but you have to be friends for sure.
I’m lonely,” she said. She had not known before that this was one of the things which made her feel sour and cross.
It’s a lonely place. Sometimes it’s the loneliest place in the world.
Don’t let us make it tidy,” said Mary anxiously. “It wouldn’t seem like a secret garden if it was tidy.
Perhaps,” she said, “to be able to learn things quickly isn’t everything. To be kind is worth a great deal to other people.
In the last century more amazing things were found out than in any century before. In this new century hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light.
The difficulty will be to keep her from learning too fast and too much. She is always sitting with her little nose burrowing into books. She doesn’t read them, Miss Minchin; she gobbles them up as if she were a little wolf instead of a little girl. She is always starving for new books to gobble...
Two lads an’ a little lass just lookin’ on at th’ springtime. I warrant it’d be better than doctor’s stuff.
When I lie by myself and remember I begin to have pains everywhere and I think of things that make me begin to scream because I hate them so. If there was a doctor anywhere who could make you forget you were ill instead of remembering it I would have him brought here.
When I was at school my jography told as th’ world was shaped like a orange an’ I found out before I was ten that th’ whole orange doesn’t belong to nobody. No one owns more than his bit of a quarter an’ there’s times it seems like there’s not enow quarters to go round. But don’t you – none o’ you – think as you own th’ whole orange or you’ll find out that you’re mistaken, an’ you won’t find it out without hard knocks.
Then I will chant,” he said. And he began, looking like a strange boy spirit. “The sun is shining – the sun is shining. That is the Magic. The flowers are growing – the roots are stirring. That is the Magic. Being alive is the Magic – being strong is the Magic. The Magic is in me – the Magic is in me. It is in me – it is in me. It’s in every one of us. It’s in Ben Weatherstaff’s back. Magic! Magic! Come and help!
Th’ world’s full o’ jackasses brayin’ an’ they never bray nowt but lies.
If Mary Lennox had been a child who was ready to be amused she would perhaps have laughed at Martha’s readiness to talk, but Mary only listened to her coldly and wondered at her freedom of manner.
She was all in pink, and a wreath of little pink wild roses lay close about her head, making her, with her tall young slimness, look like a Botticelli nymph.