L.M. Montgomery Quotes - Page 5

Anyone who has gumption knows what it is and anyone who hasn't can never know what it is.

Fear is more pain than is the pain it fears

The ghosts of things that never happened are worse than the ghosts of things that did.

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.

...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. 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?

Some people are naturally good, you know, and others are not. I'm one of the others.

I don't care a hang for any cat that hasn't stripes.

Gilbert, I'm afraid I'm scandalously in love with you.

…there was something about her that made you feel it was safe to tell her secrets.

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.

Why did dusk and fir-scent and the afterglow of autumnal sunsets make people say absurd things?

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

We _are_ rich,' said Anne staunchly. 'Why, we have sixteen years to our credit, and we are as happy as queens and we've all got imaginations, more or less. Look at that sea, girls - all silver and shallow and vision of things not seen. We couldn't enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.

He smiled his shy smile at her as he went into the yard. Anne took the memory of it with her when she went to her room that night and sat for a long while at her open window, thinking of the past and dreaming of the future. Outside the Snow Queen was mistily white in the moonshine; the frogs were singing in the marsh beyond Orchard Slope. Anne always remembered the silvery, peaceful beauty and fragrant calm of that night. It was the last night before sorrow touched her life; and no life is ever quite the same again when once that cold, sanctifying touch has been laid upon it.

We always hate people who surprise our secrets…

Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight. The evening had changed something for her. Life held a different meaning, a deeper purpose. On the surface it would go on just the same; but the deeps had been stirred. It must not be the same with her as with poor butterfly Ruby. When she came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with the shrinking terror of something wholly different--something for which accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. 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 begin here on earth. That goodnight in the garden was for all time. Anne never saw Ruby in life again.

...“Oh, Marilla, looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them,” exclaimed Anne. “You mayn’t get the things themselves; but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them. 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.”...

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.

It's delightful when your imaginations come true, isn't it?

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.

Oh, Mr. Cuthbert," she whispered, that place we came through--that white place--what was it?""Well now, you must mean the Avenue," said Matthew after a few moments' profound reflection. "It is a kind of pretty place.""Pretty? Oh, PRETTY doesn't seem the right word to use. Nor beautiful, either. They don't go far enough. Oh, it was wonderful--wonderful. It's the first thing I ever saw that couldn't be improved upon by imagination. It just satisfies me here"--she put one hand on her breast--"it made a queer funny ache and yet it was a pleasant ache. Did you ever have an ache like that, Mr. Cuthbert?""Well now, I just can't recollect that I ever had.""I have it lots of time--whenever I see anything royally beautiful. But they shouldn't call that lovely place the Avenue. There is no meaning in a name like that. They should call it--let me see--the White Way of Delight. Isn't that a nice imaginative name?

I never see a ship sailing out of the channel, or a gull soaring over the sand-bar, without wishing I were on board the ship or had wings, not like a dove 'to fly away and be at rest,’ but like a gull, to sweep out into the very heart of the storm.

Fancies are like shadows...you can't cage them, they're such wayward, dancing things.

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.

Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.

Which would you rather be if you had the choice--divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?

Mrs. Allan's face was not the face of the girlbride whom the minister had brought to Avonlea five years before. It had lost some of its bloom and youthful curves, and there were fine, patient lines about eyes and mouth. A tiny grave in that very cemetery accounted for some of them; and some new ones had come during the recent illness, now happily over, of her little son. But Mrs. Allan's dimples were as sweet and sudden as ever, her eyes as clear and bright and true; and what her face lacked of girlish beauty was now more than atoned for in added tenderness and strength.

You've all been so sure that life is good that I've never been able to disbelieve it. Never will be able to.

Well, one can't get over the habit of being a liitle girl all at once.

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.

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.

Words aren't made — they grow,' said Anne.

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--

We'll just sit here," said Barney, "and if we think of anything worth while saying we'll say it. Otherwise, not. Don't imagine you're bound to talk to me.""John Foster says," quoted Valancy, "'If you can sit in silencewith a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, youand that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you'llnever be and you need not waste time in trying.'""Evidently John Foster says a sensible thing once in a while,"conceded Barney.

Today has been a day dropped out of June into April.

I'm really a very happy, contented little person in spite of my broken heart.

[Ilse] was suffering so keenly that she wanted to arraign the universe at the bar of her pain.

True friends are always together in spirit. (Anne Shirley)

Desire grows by what it feeds on.

Ithink we all experience the same thing. We resent thethought that anything can please us when someone we loveis no longer here to share the pleasure with us, and we almostfeel as if we were unfaithful to our sorrow when wefind our interest in life returning to us.

…I'm sorry, and a little dissatisfied as well. Miss Stacy told me long ago that by the time I was twenty my character would be formed, for good or evil. I don't feel that it's what it should be. It's full of flaws.' 'So's everybody's,' said Aunt Jamesina cheerfully. 'Mine's cracked in a hundred places. Your Miss Stacy likely meant that when you are twenty your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction or 'tother, and would go on developing in that line.

What had seemed easy in imagination was rather hard in reality.

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.

The point of good writing is knowing when to stop.

Anne looked at the white young mother with a certain awe that had never entered into her feelings for Diana before. Could this pale woman with the rapture in her eyes be the little black-curled, rosy-cheeked Diana she had played with in vanished schooldays? It gave her a queer desolate feeling that she herself somehow belonged only in those past years and had no business in the present at all.

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.

I feel as if I had opened a book and found roses of yesterday sweet and fragrant, between its leaves.

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 guess ice cream is one of those things that are beyond imagination

Oh, it's delightful to have ambitions. I'm so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them-- that's the best of it. Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting.

She wondered if old dreams could haunt rooms - if, when one left forever the room where she had joyed and suffered and laughed and wept, something of her, intangible and invisible, yet nonetheless real, did not remain behind like a voiceful memory.

My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.

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…

Oh, Marilla, I thought I was happy before. Now I know that I just dreamed a pleasant dream of happiness. This is the reality.

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.

Nobody can keep on being angry if she looks into the heart of a pansy for a little while.

You have the itch for writing born in you. It's quite incurable. What are you going to do with it?

She suddenly found herself laughing without bitterness.

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.

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.