It just makes me feel glad to be alive – it’s such an interesting world. It wouldn’t be half so interesting if we knew all about everything, would it? There’d be no scope for imagination then, would there?
Prose, rightly written and read, is sometimes as beautiful as poetry.
There is such a place as fairyland – but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they have grown so old that they forget the way.
Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again; and blessed are they above mortals. They, and only they, can bring us tidings from that dear country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles. The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland.
Holmes speaks of grief “staining backward” through the pages of life; but Valancy found her happiness had stained backward likewise and flooded with rose-colour her whole previous drab existence. She found it hard to believe that she had ever been lonely and unhappy and afraid.
It is never pleasant to have our old shrines desecrated, even when we have outgrown them.
The trouble with him seems to be that he hasn’t enough imagination.
I think,” said Mrs. Frederick, “that if a person makes up her mind not to have colds she will not have colds.
Perhaps college may be around the bend in the road, but I haven’t got to the bend yet and I don’t think much about it lest I might grow discontented.
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!
Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that someone is afraid of something.
The possibilities of making new friends help to make life very fascinating.
When people ask me that absurd question “Do you like children?” I always feel like retorting – and sometimes do, if I think the questioner has brains enough to understand the retort – “Why don’t you ask me if I like grown-up people? I like some very much, detest others, and am indifferent to the vast majority.
It gives you a lovely, comfortable feeling to apologize and be forgiven, doesn’t it?
Like all woods, it seemed to be holding and enfolding secrets in its recesses, – secrets whose charm is only to be won by entering in and patiently seeking.
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. I know Matthew gave me as much love with them as ever went with Madame the Pink Lady’s jewels.
Anne came dancing home in the purple winter twilight across the snowy places. Afar in the southwest was the great shimmering, pearl-like sparkle of an evening star in a sky that was pale golden and ethereal rose over gleaming white spaces and dark glens of spruce. The tinkles of sleigh bells among the snowy hills came like elfin chimes through the frosty air, but their music was not sweeter than the song in Anne’s heart and on her lips.
I don’t want sunbursts and marble halls. I just want YOU.
Yet still the Piper piped and the dance of death went on.
I am not,” proceeded Susan firmly, “going to lament or whine or question the wisdom of the Almighty any more as I have been doing lately. Whining and shirking and blaming Providence do not get us anywhere. We have just got to grapple with whatever we have to do whether it is weeding the onion patch, or running the Government. I shall grapple. Those blessed boys have gone to war; and we women, Mrs. Dr. dear, must tarry by the stuff and keep a stiff upper lip.