Quotes from Frances Hodgson Burnett

People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment.

The afternoon was dragging towards its mellow hour. The sun was deepening the gold of its lances, the bees were going home and the birds were flying past less often.

She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, and her face was yellow because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one way or another.

The sun is shining - the sun is shining. That is the Magic. The flower are growing - the roots are stirring. That is the Magic. Being alive is the Magic - being strong is the Magic. The Magic is in me - the Magic is in me. It is in me - it is in me. In every one of us.

As she stood on the stone floor she looked a very small, odd little black figure, and she felt as small and lost and odd as she looked.

Dr. Warren was of the mental build of the man whose life would be interesting and full of outlook if it were spent on a desert island or in the Bastille.

At this moment she was remembering the voyage she had just made from Bombay with her father, Captain Crewe. She was thinking of the big ship, of the Lascars passing silently to and fro on it, of the children playing about on the hot deck, and of some young officers' wives who used to try to make her talk to them and laugh at the things she said.

There were in this strange nature, depths so awful and profound that it was not to be sounded or to be judged as others were. But one thing could have melted or caused the unconquerable spirit to bend, and this was the overwhelming passion of love--not a slight, tender feeling, but a great and powerful one, such as could be awakened but by a being of as strong and deep a nature as itself, one who was in all things its peer.

When a man is very good and knows a great deal, he is elected president.

She felt as if she had lived a long, long time.

if He made us, He must know He is to blame when He has made us weak or evil. And He must understand why we have been so made, and when we throw ourselves into the dust before Him, and pray for help and pardon, surely--surely He will lend an ear!

Poor little thin, sallow, ugly Mary—she actually looked almost pretty for a moment.

Papa won't be very long now," she said. "May we talk about the lost little girl?" "I don't think I could talk much about anything else just now," the Indian gentleman answered, knitting his forehead with a tired look.

How is it that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language that is not made up of words & everything in this world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything & it can always speak, without making a sound, to another soul.

The magic in this garden has made me stand up and know I am going to live to be a man. I am going to make the scientific experiment of trying to get some and put it in myself and make it push and draw me and make me strong. I don't know how to do it, but I think that if you keep thinking about it and calling it perhaps it will come.

And that is best of all, Ceddie,—it is better than everything else, that the world should be a little better because a man has lived—even ever so little better, dearest.

She had never been taught to ask permission to do things, and she knew nothing at all about authority, so she would not have thought it necessary to ask Mrs. Medlock if she might walk about the house, even if she had seen her.

Oh Sara! Ermengarde whispered joyfully. It is like a story. It is a story, said Sara. Everything's a story. You are a story- I am a story. Miss Minchin is a story.

When people had the cholera it seemed that they remembered nothing but themselves.

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.

She had not expected him to remember her at all and her hard little heart grew quite warm.

It's just an accident that I am not you, and you are not me!

She liked books more than anything else, and was, in fact, always inventing stories of beautiful things, and telling them to herself

The same day, he took Sara out and bought her a great many beautiful clothes—clothes so grand and rich that only a very young and inexperienced man would have bought them for a mite of a child who was to be brought up in a boarding-school. But the fact was that he was a rash, innocent young man, and very sad at the thought of parting with his little girl, who was all he had left to remind him of her beautiful mother, whom he had dearly loved.