Quotes from Frances Hodgson Burnett

She had never seen a child who sat so still without doing anything;

If nature has made you for a giver, your hands are born open and so is your heart; and thought there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full and you can give things out of that-

When you will not fly into a passion people know you are stronger than they are, because you are strong enough to hold in your rage, and they are not, and they say stupid things they wish they hadn't said afterward. There's nothing so strong as rage, except what makes you hold it in—that's stronger. It's a good thing not to answer your enemies.

I dare say it is rather hard to be a rat, she mused. Nobody likes you. People jump and run away and scream out, 'Oh, a horrid rat!' I shouldn't like people to scream and jump and say, 'Oh, a horrid Sara!' the moment they saw me. And set traps for me, and pretend they were dinner.

Uno de los descubrimientos mas extraordinarios de este siglo ha sido el que los pensamientos son tan poderosos como las pilas eléctricas, tan buenos como la luz y tan peligrosos como el veneno. si permitimos que un pensamiento triste o malo se introduzca en nuestra mente es tan arriesgado como dejar que un virus se apodere de nuestro cuerpo. Si se le permite quedarse, es posible que no podamos desprendernos nunca mas de èl.

Well, it is. One of her 'pretends' is that she is a princess. She plays it all the time—even in school. She says it makes her learn her lessons better. She wants Ermengarde to be one, too, but Ermengarde says she is too fat.

Thoughts -- just mere thoughts -- are as powerful as electric batteries -- as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison.

She said that perhaps it was not so easy to be very rich; that if any one had so many things always, one might sometimes forget that every one else was not so fortunate, and that one who is rich should always be careful and try to remember.

When I lie by myself and remember I begin to have pains everywhere and I think of things that make me begin to scream because I hate them so. If there was a doctor anywhere who could make you forget you were ill instead of remembering it I would have him brought here.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow, Praise Him all creatures here below, Praise Him above ye Heavenly Host, Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.             Amen.

If you have never had a garden you cannot understand, and if you have had a garden you will know that it would take a whole book to describe all that came to pass there.

The fact was that the fresh wind from the moor had begun to blow the cobwebs out of her young brain and to waken her up a little.

Of course there must be lots of magic in the world, but people don't know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make it happen.

She was all in pink, and a wreath of little pink wild roses lay close about her head, making her, with her tall young slimness, look like a Botticelli nymph.

If she had cried and sobbed and seemed frightened, Miss Minchin might almost have had more patience with her. She was a woman who liked to domineer and feel her power, and as she looked at Sara's pale little steadfast face and heard her proud little voice, she felt quite as if her mind was being set at naught.

I don't know what it is to be hungry

It's true," she said. "Sometimes I do pretend I am a princess. I pretend I am a princess, so that I can try and behave like one.

The tea was so delicious that it was not necessary to pretend it was anything but tea.

It sounded like something in a book and it did not make Mary feel cheerful. A house with a hundred rooms, nearly all shut up and with their doors locked—a house on the edge of a moor—whatsoever a moor was—sounded dreary. A man with a crooked back who shut himself up also! She stared out of the window with her lips pinched together, and it seemed quite natural that the rain should have begun to pour down in gray

What does it say? asked my lord. It says, `Good-night, God keep you all the night!'--just what she used to say when we were together. Every night she used to say that to me, and every morning she said, `God bless you all the day!' So you see I am quite safe all the time----

Give her books, and she would devour them and end by knowing them by heart.

The very fact that she never made an impudent answer seemed to Miss Minchin a kind of impudence in itself.

I suppose there might be good in things, even if we don't see it.

She IS too fat, said Lavinia. And Sara is too thin.