Quotes from Frances Hodgson Burnett

She lay and listened to the quietness.

And as she lay and listened, it was as if she were not only listening but waiting for something. She did not know at all what she was waiting for, but waiting she was.

The stillness seemed to hold her and she paused to hear and feel it.

her chest began to rise and fall with a quickening of her breath, and her breath quickened because her heart fluttered—as if with her haste.

Everything's a story. You are a story -I am a story. - Sara Crewe

So taking it, she stood among the dried, withered things and looked in tender regret at them.

She knew now why she had come up here. It was so that she might feel like this—as if she was upheld far away from things—as if she had left everything behind—almost as if she had fallen awake again. There was no perfume in the air, but all was still and sweet and clear.

She had been a smart, lovely, laughing and lovable thing, full of pleasure in the world, and now she was so stricken and devastated that she seemed set apart in an awful lonely world of her own.

history is not a mere lesson in a schoolbook, but is a relation of the life stories of men and women who saw strange and splendid days, and sometimes suffered strange and terrible things.

This novel was in a sense developed in stages. First published as a series in St. Nicholas Magazine in 1887 as Sara Crewe, or What Happened at Miss Minchin's, it proved extremely popular and Burnett followed this with an equally popular dramatisation of the serial, re-named The Little Princess. Burnett was then persuaded to re-write the fictional version under the new name, whilst including the numerous amendments she had made to the story in the play.

Two years before, a rival claimant to the throne had assassinated the then reigning king and his sons, and since then, bloody war and tumult had raged. The new king was a powerful man, and had a great following of the worst and most self-seeking of the people. Neighboring countries had interfered for their own welfare's sake

But the earth is full of magic, Amor said to the Ancient One, after the feast on the plain was over. Most men know nothing of it and so comes misery. The first law of the earth's magic is this one. If you fill your mind with a beautiful thought there will be no room in it for an ugly one.

They were as real as Sara, and it was careless of them not to come out of the story shadowland and say, "Here I am — tell about me." But they did not — which was their fault and not mine. People who live in the story one is writing ought to come forward at the beginning and tap the writing person on the shoulder and say, "Hallo, what about me?" If they don't, no one can be blamed but themselves and their slouching, idle ways.

She was such a little girl that one did not expect to see such a look on her small face. It would have been an old look for a child of twelve, and Sara Crewe was only seven. The fact was, however, that she was always dreaming and thinking odd things and could not herself remember any time when she had not been thinking things about grown-up people and the world they belonged to. She felt as if she had lived a long, long time.

The obsession which is called Love is an emotion past all explanation. The persons susceptible to its power are as things beneath a spell. They see, hear, and feel that of which the rest of their world is unaware, and will remain unaware for ever.

We trifle with France and labour with Germany, we sentimentalize over Italy and ecstacise over Spain- but England we love.

It is astonishing how short a time it takes for very wonderful things to happen.

Only in dreams of spring Shall I ever see again The flowering of my cherry trees.

I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must not write outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden.

If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.

Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"... "It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...

Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.

Two things cannot be in one place. Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.

She made herself stronger by fighting with the wind.