Quotes from Lucy Maud Montgomery

Without shedding of blood there is no anything… Everything, it seems to me, has to be purchased by self-sacrifice. Our race has marked every step of its painful ascent with blood. And now torrents of it must flow again… I don't think the war has been sent as a punishment for sin. I think it is the price humanity must pay for some blessing - some advance great enough to be worth the price which we may not live to see but which our children's children will inherit.

It is never quite safe to think we have done with life. When we imagine we have finished our story fate has a trick of turning the page and showing us yet another chapter.

Being frightened of things is worse than the things themselves.

When one great passion seizes possession of the soul all other feelings are crowded out.

How sadly things had changed since she had sat there the night after coming home! Then she had been full of hope and joy and the future had looked rosy with promise. Anne felt as if she had lived years since then, but before she went to bed there was a smile on her lips and peace in her heart. She had looked her duty courageously in the face and found it a friend--as duty ever is when we meet it frankly.

It was in the spring that Josephine and I had first loved each other, or, at least, had first come into the full knowledge that we loved. I think that we must have loved each other all our lives, and that each succeeding spring was a word in the revelation of that love, not to be understood until, in the fullness of time, the whole sentence was written out in that most beautiful of all beautiful springs.

Comedy and tragedy are so mixed up in life, Gilbert. The only thing that haunts me is that tale of the two who lived together fifty years and hated each other all that time. I can't believe they really did. Somebody has said that 'hate is only love that has missed its way.' I feel sure that under the hatred they really loved each other . . . just as I really loved you all those years I thought I hated you . . . and I think death would show it to them. I'm glad I found out in life.

When I read that the flash came, and I took a sheet of paper. . .and I wrote on it: I, Emily Byrd Starr, do solemnly vow this day that I will climb the Alpine Path and write my name on the scroll of fame.

Make a little room in your plans for romance again, Anne, girl. All the degrees and scholarships in the world can't make up for the lack of it. ~Aunt Josephine to Anne in Anne Of Green Gables

But [sorrows] won't get the better of you if you face 'em together with love and trust. You can weather any storm with them two for compass and pilot.

For we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won.

I've always held that early marriage is a sure indication of second-rate goods that had to be sold in a hurry. - Martin Harris

At sunset the little soul that had come with the dawning went away, leaving heartbreak behind it

I love my garden, and I love working in it. To potter with green growing things, watching each day to see the dear, new sprouts come up, is like taking a hand in creation, I think. Just now my garden is like faith - the substance of things hoped for.

What is it really like to be engaged? asked Anne curiously. Well, that all depends on who you're engaged to, answered Diana, with that maddening air of superior wisdom always assumed by those who are engaged over those who are not.

Most things are predestined, but some are just darn sheer luck, said Roaring Abel.

My future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road... Now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe that the best does.

Every day is a new day without any mistakes in it yet.

Everything, it seems to me, has to be purchased by self-sacrifice. Our race has marked every step of its painful ascent with blood. And now torrents of it must flow again. No, Mrs. Crawford, I don't think the war has been sent as a punishment for sin. I think it is the price humanity must pay for some blessing - some advance great enough to be worth the price - which we may not live to see but which our children's children will inherit.

I couldn't sew on a day like this. There's something in the air that gets in the blood and makes a sort of glory in my soul. My fingers would twitch and I'd sew a crooked seam. So it's ho for the park and the pines.

Diana and I are thinking seriously of promising each other that we will never marry but be nice old maids and live together forever. Diana hasn't quite made up her mind though, because she thinks perhaps it would be nobler to marry some wild, dashing, wicked young man and reform him.

The world looks like something God had just imagined for His own pleasure, doesn't it? Those trees look as if I could blow them away with a breath--pouf! I'm so glad I live in a world where there are white frosts, aren't you?

Make them do as you want them to, she said. I can't, mourned Anne. Averil is such an unmanageable heroine. She will do and say things I never meant her to. Then that spoils everything that went before and I have to write it all over again.

Hate is only love that has missed its way.