Anne sewed and planned little winter wardrobes... “Nan must have a red dress, since she is so set on it”... and sometimes thought of Hannah, weaving her little coat every year for the small Samuel. Mothers were the same all through the centuries... a great sisterhood of love and service... the remembered and the unremembered alike.
Looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them. You mayn’t get the things themselves but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them. – Anne Shirley.
Yet he may have committed what might be considered far greater sins that yet would not inflict on any one a tithe of the humiliation which his teasing inflicted on a child’s sensitive mind.
On Monday I received a letter from Golden Days, a Philadelphia juvenile, accepting a short story I had sent there and enclosing a cheque for five dollars. It was the first money my pen had ever earned; I did not squander it in riotous living, neither did I invest it in necessary boots and gloves. I went up town and bought five volumes of poetry with it – Tennyson, Byron, Milton, Longfellow, Whittier. I wanted something I could keep for ever in memory of having “arrived.
And I have such a cold in the head – I can do nothing but sniffle, sigh and sneeze. Isn’t that alliterative agony for you?
Outside in the garden, which was full of mellow sunset light streaming through the dark old firs to the west of it, stood Anne and Diana, gazing bashfully at each other over a clump of gorgeous tiger lilies.
All your life Davy, you’ll find yourself doing things you don’t want to do – Anne Shirley.
There is nothing but meetings and partings in this world.
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.
Oh yes, I don’t deny I married you because I was sorry for you. And then-I found you the best and jolliest and dearest little pal and chum a fellow ever had. Witty-loyal-sweet. You made me believe again in the reality of friendship and love.
How quiet the woods are today... not a murmur except that soft wind putting in the treetops! It sounds like surf on a faraway shore. How dear the woods are! You beautiful trees! I love every one of you as a friend!
I am of one mind with the Irishman who said you could get used to anything, even to being hanged!
The trouble is you and Mrs Lynde don’t understand each other. That is always what is wrong when people don’t like each other. – Anne Shirley.
I didn’t really remember that the sea was so blue and the roads so red and the wood nooks so wild and fairy haunted. Yes, the fairies still abide here. I vow I could find scores of them under the violets in Rainbow Valley.
Did she think ginger cookies a substitute for impassioned longings and mad, wild, glamorous adventures?
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.
How terrible it would be to be doing something you didn’t like every day.
It’s a pretty good world, after all, isn’t it, Marilla?” concluded Anne happily. “Mrs. Lynde was complaining the other day that it wasn’t much of a world. She said whenever you looked forward to anything pleasant you were sure to be more or less disappointed... perhaps that is true. But there is a good side to it too. The bad things don’t always come up to your expectations either... they nearly always turn out ever so much better than you think.
Soul-ache doesn’t worry folks near as much as stomach-ache.
Have you ever noticed how many different 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 all the undertones that thread are different. I’m sure if I were totally blind and insensitive to heat and cold I could easily tell just where I was by the quality of the silence about me.