It is a strange thing to read a letter after the writer is dead – a bitter-sweet thing, in which pain and comfort are strangely mingled.
I shall always end my stories happily. I don’t care whether it’s ‘true to life’ or not. It’s true to life as it should be, and that’s a better truth than the other.
It is not vanity to know your own good points. It would just be stupidity if you didn’t.
What is to be will be, and what isn’t to be happens sometimes.
You talk in the language of the violets.
She felt very old and mature and wise – which showed how young she was. She told herself that she longed greatly to go back to those dear merry days when life was seen through a rosy mist of hope and illusion, and possessed an indefinable something that had passed away forever. Where was it now – the glory and the dream?
All that supported her through the boredom of her days was the hope of going on a dream spree at night.
If I had my way I’d shut everything out of your life but happiness and pleasure, Anne,” said Gilbert in the tone that meant “danger ahead.” “Then you would be very unwise,” rejoined Anne hastily. “I’m sure no life can be properly developed and rounded out without some trial and sorrow – though I suppose it is only when we are pretty comfortable that we admit it...
I don’t feel like tame domestic joys today. I want to feel alone and free and wild.
That Anne-girl improves all the time,” she said. “I get tired of other girls – there is such a provoking and eternal sameness about them. Anne has as many shades as a rainbow and every shade is the prettiest while it lasts.
A body can get used to anything, even to being hanged, as the Irishman said.
Now, don’t be looking I-told-you-so, Matthew. That’s bad enough in a woman, but it isn’t to be endured in a man.
The folks who lived before me have done so much for me that I want to show my gratitude by doing something for the folks who will live after me.
You must learn to think a little, Anne, that’s what. The proverb you need to go by is ‘Look before you leap’ – especially into spare room beds.
It’s all very well to say resist temptation, but it’s ever so much easier to resist it if you can’t get the key.
Gracious heavenly Father, I thank Thee for the White Way of Delight and the Lake of Shining Waters and Bonny and the Snow Queen. I’m really extremely grateful for them. And that’s all the blessings I can think of just now to thank Thee for. As for the things I want, they’re so numerous that it would take a great deal of time to name them all so I will only mention the two most important. Please let me stay at Green Gables; and please let me be good-looking when I grow up.
What is to be, will be,” said Mrs. Rachel gloomily, “and what isn’t to be happens sometimes.
Susan Baker and the Anne Shirley of other days saw her coming, as they sat on the big veranda at Ingleside, enjoying the charm of the cat’s light, the sweetness of sleepy robins whistling among the twilit maples, and the dance of a gusty group of daffodils blowing against the old, mellow, red brick wall of the lawn. Anne.
What hurt her was that she had never had a chance to be anything but an old maid. No man had ever desired her.
Shirley, “the little brown boy,” as he was known in the family “Who’s Who,” was asleep in Susan’s arms. He was brown-haired, brown-eyed and brown-skinned, with very rosy cheeks, and he was Susan’s especial love. After his birth Anne had been very ill for a long time, and Susan “mothered” the baby with a passionate tenderness which none of the other children, dear as they were to her, had ever called out. Dr. Blythe had said that but for her he would never have lived.
Anne, who was perched on the edge of the veranda, enjoying the charm of a mild west wind blowing across a newly ploughed field on a gray November twilight and piping a quaint little melody among the twisted firs below the garden, turned her dreamy face over her shoulder.