Quotes from L.M. Montgomery

I'd like to add some beauty to life," said Anne dreamily. "I don't exactly want to make people KNOW more... though I know that IS the noblest ambition... but I'd love to make them have a pleasanter time because of me... to have some little joy or happy thought would never have existed if I hadn't been born.

Experience teaches sense. You can't learn it in a college course.

the dark is your friend, isn't it? When you turn on the light, it makes the dark your enemy . . . and it glowers in at you resentfully.

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.

We had a yelling contest there the other night to see which could yell the loudest. To my surprise I found I could. You never can tell what you can do till you try.

Isn't it a pity we can't have two husbands? One to look at and one to talk to.

Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something.

He was a foe man worthy of her steel.

There's something very solemn about the idea of a new year, isn't there? Just think of three hundred and sixty-five whole days with not a thing happened in them yet.

That boy ought to sleep with a rubber band around his head to train his ears not to stick out. I had a beau once who did that and it improved him immensely.

Gilbert would never have dreamed of writing a sonnet to her eyebrows. But then, Gilbert could see a joke. She had once told Roy a funny story—and he had not seen the point of it. She recalled the chummy laugh she and Gilbert had had together over it, and wondered uneasily if life with a man who had no sense of humor might not be somewhat uninteresting in the long run. But who could expect a melancholy, inscrutable hero to see the humorous side of things? It would be flatly unreasonable.

Holmes speaks of grief "staining backward" through the pages of life; but Valancy found her happiness had stained backward likewise and flooded with rose-colour her whole previous drab existence. She found it hard to believe that she had ever been lonely and unhappy and afraid.

It is never pleasant to have our old shrines desecrated, even when we have outgrown them.

And then - thwack! - Anne had brought her slate down on Gilbert's head and cracked it - slate not head - clear across.

She] may be an acquired taste with some folks; but I didn't keep on eating bananas because I was told I'd learn to like them if I did.

Anyhow, we've decided on the experiment and goodness only knows what will come of it.

The trouble with him seems to be that he hasn't enough imagination.

Surely the flowers of a hundred springs are simply the souls of beautiful things!

At life's banquet of success I may not be the guest of honor, but I'll be among those present.

For spring is just around the corner and I have forgotten everything but gladness.

Some women's intended from the start to be old maids, and I'm afraid I'm one of them, Miss Shirley, ma'am, because I've awful little patience with the men.

It seemed like a garden where no frost could wither or rough wind blow--a garden remembering a hundred vanished summers.

Mrs. Lynde was complaining the other day that it wasn't much of a world. She said whenever you looked forward to anything pleasant you were sure to be more or less disappointed . . . perhaps that is true. But there is a good side to it too. The bad things don't always come up to your expectations either . . . they nearly always turn out ever so much better than you think.

raised herself on one round elbow and looked out on a tiny river like a gleaming blue snake winding itself around a purple hill. Right below the house was a field white as snow with daisies, and the shadow of the huge maple tree that bent over the little house fell lacily across it. Far beyond it were the white crests of Four Winds Harbour and a long range of sun-washed dunes and red cliffs.