Quotes from L. M. Montgomery

Isn't a dead language rather a sad thing, Janet? Once it lived and burned and glowed. People said loving things in it…bitter things…wise and silly things in it. I wonder who was the very last person to utter a sentence in living Latin.

I think this story-writing business is the foolishest yet, scoffed Marilla. You'll get a pack of nonsense into your heads and waste time that should be put to your lessons. Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse.

Welcome, New Year, said Captain Jim, bowing low as the last stroke died away. I wish you all the best years of your lives, mates. I reckon taht whatever the New Year brings us will be the best the Great Captain has for us -and somehow or other we'll all make port in a good harbour.

Anne came dancing home in the purple winter twilight across the snowy places. Afar in the southwest was the great shimmering, pearl-like sparkle of an evening star in a sky that was pale golden and ethereal rose over gleaming white spaces and dark glens of spruce. The tinkles of sleigh bells among the snowy hills came like elfin chimes through the frosty air, but their music was not sweeter than the song in Anne's heart and on her lips.

They belonged to each other; and, no matter what life might hold for them, it could never alter that. Their happiness was in each other's keeping and both were unafraid.

Love! What a searing, torturing, intolerably sweet thing it was - this possession of body, soul and mind! With something at its core as fine and remote and purely spiritual as the tiny blue spark in the heart of the unbreakable diamond. No dream had ever been like this. She was no longer solitary. She was one of a vast sisterhood - all the women who had ever loved in the world.

I didn't think about its being wrong to go in and try on the brooch; but I see now that it was and I'll never do it again. That's one good thing about me. I never do the same naughty thing twice

Doesn't Mr. Allan preach magnificent sermons? Mrs. Lynde says he is improving every day and the first thing we know some city church will gobble him up and then we'll be left and have to turn to and break in another green peacher. But I don't see the use of meeting trouble halfway, do you, Marilla? I think it would be better just to enjoy Mr. Allan while we have him.

Being in love makes you a perfect slave, I think. And it would give a man such power to hurt you

In geometry Anne met her Waterloo. "It's perfectly awful stuff, Marilla," she groaned. "I'm sure I'll never be able to make heads or tail of it. There is not scope for imagination in it at all.

But of course I'd rather be Anne of Green Gables sewing patchwork than Anne of any other place with nothing to do but play.

For two years she had worked earnestly and faithfully, making many mistakes and learning from them. She had had her reward. She had taught her scholars something, but she felt that they had taught her much more-lessons of tenderness, self-control, innocent wisdom, lore of childish hearts.

Oh, what I know about myself isn't really worth telling, said Anne eagerly. If you'll only let me tell you what I imagine about myself you'll think it ever so much more interesting.

Anne, who was perched on the edge of the veranda, enjoying the charm of a mild west wind blowing across a newly ploughed field on a gray November twilight and piping a quaint little melody among the twisted firs below the garden, turned her dreamy face over her shoulder.

Well, in a way she might be right. It might be better if he were married...It all came back to the fact that he was sure nobody would ever understand him as well as he understood himself.

I will not be poisoned by your bitterness.

Let me remind you that the measure of any one's freedom is what he can do without.

Roses red and vi'lets blue, Sugar's sweet, and so are you

That sounds John Fosterish, teased Valancy. What have I done that deserved a slam like that? complained Barney.

I am your friend and you are mine, for always, she said. Such a friend as I never had before. I have had many dear and beloved friends—but there is a something in you, Leslie, that I never found in anyone else. You have more to offer me in that rich nature of yours, and I have more to give you than I had in my careless girlhood. We are both women—and friends forever. They clasped hands and smiled at each other through the tears that filled the gray eyes and the blue.

Oh, I wonder if I shall ever be able to do anything worth while in the way of writing.

I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens, but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.

The things you wanted so much when you were a child don't seem half so wonderful to you when you get them.

Dora is too good," said Anne. "She'd behave just as well if there wasn't a soul to tell her what to do. She was born already brought up, so she doesn't need us; and I think," concluded Anne, hitting on a very vital truth, "that we always love best the people who need us. Davy needs us badly.