Frances Hodgson Burnett Quotes

Two worst things as can happen to a child is never to have his own way - or always to have it.

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.

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

Much more surprising things can happen to anyone who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable, determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place.

As long as you have a garden you have a future and as long as you have a future you are alive.

Locations have been

All girls are! Even if they live in tiny old attics, even if they dress in rags, even if they aren't pretty, or smart, or young, they're still princesses - all of us! Didn't your father ever tell you that? Didn't he?

Little Princess Little Lord

As long as one has a garden, one has a future. As long as one has a future, one is alive.

To speak robin to a robin is like speaking French to a Frenchman

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

Tom's Cabin, and she spent many hours acting out

Lottie was so delighted that she quite forgot her first shocked impression of the attic. In fact, when she was lifted down from the table and returned to earthly things, as it were, Sara was able to point out to her many beauties in the room which she herself would not have suspected the existence of.

And the roses - the roses! Rising out of the grass, tangled round the sun-dial, wreathing the tree trunks and hanging from their branches, climbing up the walls and spreading over them with long garlands falling in cascades - they came alive day by day, hour by hour. Fair fresh leaves, and buds - and buds - tiny at first but swelling and working Magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden air. Colin

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.

When a man is overcome by anger, he has a poisoned fever. He loses his strength, he loses his power over himself and over others. He throws away time in which he might have gained the end he desires. The is no time for anger in the world. - The Ancient One

Nothing is more interesting than repressed emotion. The appearance of sardonic coldness and stoicism which has deceived you is but a hollow mockery; beneath it I secrete a maelstrom of impassioned feeling and a mausoleum of blighted hopes.

That afternoon the whole world seemed to devote itself to being perfect and radiantly beautiful and kind to one boy.

One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts
just mere thoughts
are as powerful as electric batteries
as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.

Perhaps," she said, "to be able to learn things quickly isn't everything. To be kind is worth a great deal to other people.

So long as I know what's expected of me, I can manage.

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

The robin was tremendously busy. He was very much pleased to see gardening begun on his own estate. He had often wondered at Ben Weatherstaff. Where gardening is done all sorts of delightful things to eat are turned up with the soil. Now here was this new kind of creature who was not half Ben's size and yet had had the sense to come into his garden and begin at once.

Meant to give a new impulse to the race - to rouse human creatures to new moods, to thrust them into places where they see new things. Men and women are being dragged out of their self-absorbed corners and stirred up and shaken.

Victorian and touchingly respectable. "I have been crying," confessed Lady Agatha. "I was afraid so, Lady Agatha," said Emily.

Whatever comes cannot alter one thing.

Sometimes since I've been in the garden I've looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden - in all the places.

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.

She would never tell him and he could stay in his room and never get any fresh air and die if he liked!

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

I don't like it, papa," she said. "But then I dare say soldiers - even brave ones - don't really like going into battle.

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

Listen to th' wind wutherin' round the house," she said. "You could bare stand up on the moor if you was out on it tonight."
Mary did not know what "wutherin'" meant until she listened, and then she understood. It must mean that hollow shuddering sort of roar which rushed round and round the house, as if the giant no one could see were buffeting it and beating at the walls and windows to try to break in. But one knew he could not get in, and somehow it made one feel very safe and warm inside a room with a red coal fire.

Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world," he said wisely one day, "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 them happen. I am going to try and experiment.

My mother always says people should be able to take care of themselves, even if they're rich and important.

But the calm had brought a sort of courage and hope with it. Instead of giving way to thoughts of the worst, he actually found he was trying to believe in better things.

It's a lonely place. Sometimes it's the loneliest place in the world.

... Mrs. Warren allowed her book to fall closed upon her lap, and her attractive face awakened to an expression of agreeable expectation, in itself denoting the existence of interesting and desirable qualities in the husband at the moment inserting his latch-key in the front door preparatory to mounting the stairs and joining her. The man who, after twenty-five years of marriage, can call, by his return to her side, this expression to the countenance of an intelligent woman is, without question or argument, an individual whose life and occupations are as interesting as his character and points of view.

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 know what it is to be hungry, and it is very hard when one cannot even pretend it away. -Sara

All women are princesses , it is our right.

Th' world's full o' jackasses brayin' an' they never bray nowt but lies.

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 scarcely ever do.

Imagine, if you can, what the rest of the evening was like. How they crouched by the fire which blazed and leaped and made much of itself in the little grate. How they removed the covers of the dishes, and found rich, hot savory soup, which was a meal in itself, and sandwiches and toast and muffins enough for both of them.

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.

Perhaps I have not really a good temper at all, but if you have everything you want and everyone is kind to you, how can you help but be good-tempered? Perhaps I'm a HIDEOUS child, and no one will ever know, just beecause I never have any trials. (Sara Crewe, A Little Princess)

Once when I was givin' th' children a bit of a preach after they'd been fightin' I ses to 'em all, When I was at school my jography told as th' world was shaped like a orange an' I found out before I was ten that th' whole orange doesn't belong to nobody. No one owns more than his bit of a quarter an' there's times it seems like there's not enow quarters to go round. But don't you - none o' you - think as you own th' whole orange or you'll find out you're mistaken, an' you won't find it out without hard knocks.

If you fill your mind with a beautiful thought, there will be no room in it for an ugly one. - King Amor

You are nicer than I am," said Sara. "I was too proud to try and make friends. You see, now that trials have come, they have shown that I am not a nice child. I was afraid they would. Perhaps"--wrinkling her forehead wisely--"that is what they were sent for."
"I don't see any good in them," said Ermengarde stoutly.
"Neither do I--to speak the truth," admitted Sara, frankly. "But I suppose there might be good in things, even if we don't see it. There might"--doubtfully--"be good in Miss Minchin.

I am going to," answered

Why, we are just the same - I am only a little girl like you. It's just an accident that I am not you, and you are not me!

Perhaps it is the key to the garden!

There mostly is rats an' mice in attics. You gets used to the noise they makes scuttling about. I've got so I don't mind 'em s' long as they don't run over my piller."
"Ugh!" said Sara.
"You gets used to anythin' after a bit," said Becky. "You have to, miss, if you're born a scullery maid. I'd rather have rats than cockroaches."
"So would I," said Sara; "I suppose you might make friends with a rat in time, but I don't believe I should like to make friends with a cockroach.

Perhaps to be able to learn things quickly isn't everything. To be kind is worth a great deal to other people ... Lots of clever people have done harm and have been wicked.

The truth is that when one is still a child-or even if one is grown up- and has been well fed, and has slept long and softly and warm; when one has gone to sleep in the midst of a fairy story, and has wakened to find it real, one cannot be unhappy or even look as if one were; and one could not, if one tried, keep a glow of joy out of one's eyes.

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.

You can lose a friend in springtime easier than any other season if you're too curious.

Nothing in the world is so strong as a kind heart

If Sara had been a boy and lived a few centuries ago, her father used to say, 'she would have gone about the country with her sword drawn, rescuing and defending everyone in distress. She always wants to fight when she sees people in trouble.

She looked into the staring glass eyes and complacent face, and suddenly a sort of heartbroken rage seized her. She lifted her little savage hand and knocked Emily off the chair, bursting into a passion of sobbing- Sara who never cried.

Everything is made out of Magic,

If you tell stories, you like nothing so much as to tell them to people who want to listen.

I pretend I am a princess,so that I can try and behave like one.

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.

In India she had always felt hot and too languid to care much about anything. 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.

We do not believe until we want a thing and feel that we shall die if 'tis not granted to us, and then we kneel and kneel and believe, because we must have someone to ask help from.

The mere fact that Lottie had come and gone away again made things seem a little worse-just as perhaps prisoners feel a little more desolate after visitors come and go, leaving them behind.

Lottie had always found, while in her own nursery at home, kicking and screaming would always be quieted by any means she insisted upon. Poor plump Miss. Amelia was trying first one method, then another.
"Poor darling!" she said one moment; "I know you haven't any mamma, poor-" Then in quite another tone: "If you don't stop, Lottie, I will shake you. Poor little angel! There-there! You wicked, bad, detestable child, I will smack you! I will!

Magic is in her just as it is in Dickon," said Colin. "It makes her think of ways to do things - nice things.

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.

In each century since the beginning of the world wonderful things have been discovered. In the last century more amazing things were found out than in any other century before. In this new century hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light. At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they see it can be done- then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of these things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts- just mere thoughts- are as powerful as electric batteries- as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.
The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett
1911

THE SECRET GARDEN

You are nothing but a doll. Nothing but a doll
doll
doll! You care for nothing. You are stuffed with sawdust. You never had a heart. Nothing could ever make you feel. You are a doll!

Mistress Mary Quite Contrary

All that I do is right - for me. I make it so by doing it. Do you think that I am conquered by the laws that other women crouch and whine before, because they dare not break them, though they long to do so? I am my own law - and the law of some others.

to speak to her. He was interested in his roses (which, she heard afterward, were to be sent to town to an invalid friend),

How dare you think?

Often thought that you had just the kind of commonplace gifts that a host of commonplace people want to find at their service. An old servant of mine who lives in Mortimer Street

Justice is mercy's highest self.

A person who was clever ought to be clever enough not to be unjust or deliberately unkind to anyone.

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

It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of climbing roses which were so thick that they were matted together.

Mother says as th' two worst things as can happen to a child is never have his own way-- or always to have it. She doesn't know which is th' worst.

I shall live forever and ever and ever ' he cried grandly. 'I shall find out thousands and thousands of things. I shall find out about people and creatures and everything that grows - like Dickon - and I shall never stop making Magic. I'm well I'm well

What you have to do with your mind, when your body is miserable, is to make it think of something else.

People never like me and I never like people," she thought. "And I never can talk as the Crawford children could. They were always talking and laughing and making noises.

Perhaps, the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen.

The worst thing never quite comes.

Adversity tries people, and mine has tried you and proved how nice you are.

Hang in there. It is astonishing how short a time it can take for very wonderful things to happen.

[Mary] did not know that going outside was the best thing she could have done, and she did not know that, when she began to walk quickly or even run along paths and down the avenue she was stirring her slow blood and making herself stronger by fighting with the wind which rushed at her face and roared and held her back as if it were some giant she could not see. But the big breaths of rough fresh air blown over the heather filled her lungs with something which was good for her whole thin body and whipped some red color into her cheeks and brightened her dull eyes when she did not know anything about it.

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.

Yorkshire word and means spoiled and

One marvel of a day he had walked so far that when he returned the moon was high and full and all the world was purple shadow and silver.

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.

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true too ... she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived.

The youngest youngster vibrates with the shock of cannon firing, even though the sound may not be near enough to be heard," answered Coombe. "We're all vibrating unconsciously. We are shuddering consciously at the things we hear and are mad to put a stop to, before they go further.

I'm growing fatter," said Mary,

The paths and down the avenue, she was stirring her slow blood and making herself stronger

When new beautiful thoughts began to push out the old hideous ones, life began to come back to him, his blood ran healthily through his veins and strength poured into him like a flood.