L.M. Montgomery Quotes

You see," she concluded miserably, "when I can call like that to him across space
I belong to him. He doesn't love me
he never will
but I belong to him.

Diana go slowly out with the others, to walk home alone through the Birch Path and Violet Vale, it was all the former could do to keep her seat and refrain from rushing impulsively after her chum. A lump came into her throat, and she hastily retired behind the pages of her uplifted Latin grammar to hide the tears in her eyes. Not for worlds would Anne have had Gilbert Blythe or Josie Pye see those tears. "But, oh, Marilla, I really felt that I had tasted the bitterness of death, as Mr. Allan said in his sermon last Sunday, when I saw Diana go out alone," she said mournfully that night. "I thought how splendid it would have been if Diana had only been going to study for the Entrance, too. But we can't have things perfect in this imperfect world, as Mrs. Lynde says. Mrs.

An old house that had lived its life long ago and so was very quiet and wise and a little mysterious. Also a little austere, but very kind.

Even skeptical Dan prayed, his skepticism falling away from him like a discarded garment in this valley of the shadow, which sifts out hearts and tries souls, until we all, grown-up or children, realize our weakness, and, finding that our own puny strength is as a reed shaken in the wind, creep back humbly to the God we have vainly dreamed we could do without.

As I was when I was getting married myself. I felt exactly like a bride again last evening when I was up on the hill seeing

We are never half so interesting when we have learned that language is given us to enable us to conceal our thoughts.

Charlotte had never forgotten it - she was always looking for it. An old house facing seaward, ships going up and down. Spruce woods and musty hills, cold salt air from the water, rest, quiet, silence.

Most things are predestined, but some are just darn sheer luck, said Roaring Abel.

Emily," whispered Teddy, "you're the sweetest girl in the world."

The words have been said so often by so many millions of lads to so many millions of lasses, that they ought to be worn to tatters. But when you hear them for the first time, in some magic hour of your teens, they are as new and fresh and wondrous as if they had just drifted over the hedges of Eden. Madam, whoever you are, and however old you are, be honest, and admit that the first time you heard those words on the lips of some shy sweetheart, was the great moment of your life.

To be obliged to sit still when mental agony urges us to stride up and down is the refinement of torture. Every

and grim and faithful handmaiden of the Blythe family at Ingleside, never lost an opportunity of calling her "Mrs. Marshall Elliott," with

It's wonderful to have ambition.

How beautiful the old Glen was, in its August ripeness, with its chain of bowery old homesteads, tilled meadows and quiet gardens. The western sky was like a great golden pearl. Far down the harbour was frosted with a dawning moonlight. The air was full of exquisite sounds - sleepy robin whistles, wonderful, mournful, soft murmurs of wind in the twilit trees, rustle of aspen poplars talking in silvery whispers and shaking their dainty, heart-shaped leaves, lilting young laughter from the windows of rooms where the girls were making ready for the dance. The world was steeped in maddening loveliness of sound and colour. He would think only of these things and of the deep, subtle joy they gave him.

People who are different from other people are always called peculiar,' said Anne.

She had died in her sleep, painlessly and calmly, and on her face was a smile- as if, after all, death had come as a kindly friend to lead her over the threshold, instead of the grisly phantom she had dreaded...Anne, looking down through a mist of tears, at her old playfellow, thought she saw the face of God had meant Ruby to have, and remembered it so always.

A proper Irishman always does what a lady asks him. Sure an' it's been the ruin av us. We're at the mercy av the petticoats.

I didn't really remember that the sea was so blue and the roads so red and the wood nooks so wild and fairy haunted. Yes, the fairies still abide here. I vow I could find scores of them under the violets in Rainbow Valley.

I suppose it was a romantic was to perish ... for a mouse

It's the homiest spot I ever saw-it's homier than home avowed Philippa Gorden, looking about her with delighted eyes.

Mrs. Lynde says Mrs. Wrights grandfather stole a sheep but Marilla says we mustent speak ill of the dead. Why mustent we, Anne? I want to know. It's pretty safe ain't it?

To love is easy and therefore common - but to understand - how rare it is!

What is to be, will be," said Mrs. Rachel gloomily, "and what isn't to be happens sometimes.

I don't really care what people think about me if they don't let me see it.

I asked Doss if she had no regard for appearancs. She said, 'I've been keeping up appearances all my life. Now I'm going in for realities. Appearances can go hang!

Oh yes, I don't deny I married you because I was sorry for you. And then-I found you the best and jolliest and dearest little pal and chum a fellow ever had. Witty-loyal-sweet. You made me believe again in the reality of friendship and love.

She has no serious ideals at all-her sole aspiration seems to be to have a good time.

The young minister was a very good young man, and tried to do his duty; but he was dreadfully afraid of meeting old Mr. Scott, because he had been told that the old minister was very angry at being set aside, and would likely give him a sound drubbing, if he ever met him. One day the young minister was visiting the Crawfords in Markdale, when they suddenly heard old Mr. Scott's voice in the kitchen. The young minister turned pale as the dead, and implored Mrs. Crawford to hide him. But she couldn't get him out of the room, and all she could do was to hide him in the china closet. The young minister slipped into the china closet, and old Mr. Scott came into the room. He talked very nicely, and read, and prayed. They made very long prayers in those days, you know; and at the end of his prayer he said. 'Oh Lord, bless the poor young man hiding in the closet. Give him courage not to fear the face of man. Make him a burning and a shining light to this sadly abused congregation.

But if you call me Anne, please call me Anne with an 'e'.

Dear old world', she murmured, 'you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.

Comedy and tragedy are so mixed up in life, Gilbert. The only thing that haunts me is that tale of the two who lived together fifty years and hated each other all that time. I can't believe they really did. Somebody has said that 'hate is only love that has missed its way.' I feel sure that under the hatred they really loved each other ... just as I really loved you all those years I thought I hated you ... and I think death would show it to them. I'm glad I found out in life.

I hear the Wind Woman running with soft, soft footsteps over the hill. I shall always think of the wind as a personality. She is a shrew when she blows from the north
a lonely seeker when she blows from the east
a laughing girl when she comes from the west
and tonight from the south a little grey fairy.

At seventeen dreams DO satisfy because you think the realities are waiting for you farther on.

It is ever so much easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable.

It was in the spring that Josephine and I had first loved each other, or, at least, had first come into the full knowledge that we loved. I think that we must have loved each other all our lives, and that each succeeding spring was a word in the revelation of that love, not to be understood until, in the fullness of time, the whole sentence was written out in that most beautiful of all beautiful springs.

But I believe I rather like superstitious people. They lend color to life. Wouldn't it be a rather drab world if everybody was wise and sensible ... and good? What would we find to talk about?

Most of the trouble in life comes from misunderstanding, I think,' said Anne.

But heaven won't be like church - all the time," said Anne. "I hope it ain't," said Davy emphatically. "If it is I don't want to go. Church is awful dull. Anyway, I don't mean to go for ever so long. I mean to live to be a hundred years old, like Mr. Thomas Blewett of White Sands. He says he's lived so long 'cause he always smoked tobacco and it killed all the germs. Can I smoke tobacco pretty soon, Anne?" "No, Davy, I hope you'll never use tobacco," said Anne absently. "What'll you feel like if the germs kill me then?" demanded Davy.

He was so lonely that he laughed at himself.

Ain't it strange how innocent little creatures like children like the blood-thirstiest stories?

Truth exists, only lies have to be invented.

For Anne to take things calmly would have been to change her nature. All 'spirit and fire and dew,' as she was, the pleasures and pains of life came to her with trebled intensity. Marilla felt this and was vaguely troubled over it, realizing that the ups and downs of existence would probably bear hardly on this impulsive soul and not sufficiently understanding that the equally great capacity for delight might more than compensate. Therefore Marilla conceived it to be her duty to drill Anne into a tranquil uniformity of disposition as impossible and alien to her as to a dancing sunbeam in one of the brook shallows. She did not make much headway, as she sorrowfully admitted to herself. The downfall of some dear hope or plan plunged Anne into 'deeps of affliction.' The fulfillment thereof exalted her to dizzy realms of delight. Marilla had almost begun to despair of ever fashioning this waif of the world into her model little girl of demure manners and prim deportment. Neither would she have believed that she really liked Anne much better as she was.

The faint laughter of winds was always about them and the colors of Mistawis, imperial and spiritual, under the changing clouds, were something that cannot be expressed in mere words. Shadows, too. Clustering in the pines until a wind shook them out and pursued them over Mistawis. They lay all day along the shores, threaded by ferns and wild blossoms. They stole around the headlands in the glow of the sunset, until twilight wove them all into one great web of dusk.

Cousin Jimmy thinks I did perfectly right. Cousin Jimmy would think I had done perfectly right if I had murdered Andrew and buried him in the Land of Uprightness. It's very nice to have one friend like that, though too many wouldn't be good for you.

But I'll have to ask you to wait a long time, Anne," said Gilbert sadly. "It will be three years before I'll finish my medical course. And even then there will be no diamond sunbursts and marble halls."

Anne laughed.

"I don't want sunbursts and marble halls. I just want YOU. You see I'm quite as shameless as Phil about it. Sunbursts and marble halls may be all very well, but there is more `scope for imagination' without them. And as for the waiting, that doesn't matter. We'll just be happy, waiting and working for each other -- and dreaming. Oh, dreams will be very sweet now."

Gilbert drew her close to him and kissed her. Then they walked home together in the dusk, crowned king and queen in the bridal realm of love, along winding paths fringed with the sweetest flowers that ever bloomed, and over haunted meadows where winds of hope and memory blew.

Big guns are good but the Almighty is better, and He is on our side, no matter what the Kaiser says about it.

She thought in exclamation points

Again Anne shivered. How terrible ... sitting opposite each other at table ... lying down beside each other at night ... going to church with their babies to be christened ... and hating each other through it all! Yet they must have loved to begin with. Was it possible she and Gilbert could ever ... nonsense! The Pringles were getting on her nerves. Handsome

When Marilla took Anne up to bed that night she said stiffly: "Now, Anne, I noticed last night that you threw your clothes all about the floor when you took them off. That is a very untidy habit, and I can't allow it at all. As soon as you take off any article of clothing fold it neatly and place it on the chair. I haven't any use at all for little girls who aren't neat.

I thought Marilla Cuthburt was an old fool when I heard she'd adopted a girl out of an orphan asylum," she said to herself, "but I guess she didn't make much of a mistake after all. If I'd a child like Anne in the house all the time I'd be a better and happier woman.

I went up on the hill and walked about until twilight had deepened into an autumn night with a benediction of starry quietude over it. I was alone but not lonely. I was a queen in halls of fancy.

There had been no snow up to this time, but as Diana crossed the old log bridge on her homeward way the white flakes were beginning to flutter down over the fields and woods, russet and gray in their dreamless sleep. Soon the far-away slopes and hills were dim and wraith-like through their gauzy scarfing, as if pale autumn had flung a misty bridal veil over her hair and was waiting for her wintry bridegroom.

Never be silent with persons you love and distrust," Mr. Carpenter had said once. "Silence betrays.

Well, anyway, when I am grown up," said Anne decidedly, "I'm always going to talk to little girls as if they were too, and I'll never laugh when they use big words. I know from sorrowful experience how that hurts one's feelings.

I'm so glad you're here, Anne,' said Miss Lavendar, nibbling at her candy. 'If you weren't I should be blue ... very blue ... almost navy blue. Dreams and make-believes are all very well in the daytime and the sunshine, but when dark and storm come they fail to satisfy. One wants real things then. But you don't know this ... seventeen never knows it. At seventeen dreams do satisfy because you think the realities are waiting for you further on.

Well, one can't get over the habit of being a liitle girl all at once.

I don't think there is much fear of your dying of grief as long as you can talk, Anne," said Marilla unsympathetically.

Looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them. You mayn't get the things themselves but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them. - Anne Shirley

Hate is only love that has missed its way.

I do know my own mind,' protested Anne. 'The trouble is, my mind changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again.

Nobody with any real sense of humor *can* write a love story ... Shakespeare is the exception that proves the rule. (90-91)

Leslie, after her first anguish was over, found it possible to go on with life after all, as most of us do, no matter what our particular form of torment has been. It is even possible that she enjoyed moments of it, when she was one of the gay circle in the little house of dreams.

Once upon a time we all walked on the golden road. It was a fair highway, through the Land of Lost Delight; shadow and sunshine were blessedly mingled, and every turn and dip revealed a fresh charm and a new loveliness to eager hearts and unspoiled eyes.

On that road we heard the song of morning stars; we drank in fragrances aerial and sweet as a May mist; we were rich in gossamer fancies and iris hopes; our hearts sought and found the boon of dreams; the years waited beyond and they were very fair; life was a rose-lipped comrade with purple flowers dripping from her fingers.

We may long have left the golden road behind, but its memories are the dearest of our eternal possessions; and those who cherish them as such may haply find a pleasure in the pages of this book, whose people are pilgrims on the golden road of youth.

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

Yet he may have committed what might be considered far greater sins that yet would not inflict on any one a tithe of the humiliation which his teasing inflicted on a child's sensitive mind.

I heard someone once say that the years from fifteen to nineteen are the best years in a girl's life.

I've put out a lot of little roots these two years," Anne told the moon, "and when I'm pulled up they're going to hurt a great deal. But it's best to go, I think, and, as Marilla says, there's no good reason why I shouldn't. I must get out all my ambitions and dust them.

What is it really like to be engaged?" asked Anne curiously.
"Well, that all depends on who you're engaged to," answered Diana, with that maddening air of superior wisdom always assumed by those who are engaged over those who are not.

I don't want sunbursts and marble halls. I just want YOU. [ ... ] Sunbursts and marble halls may be all very well, but there is more 'scope for imagination' without them. And as for the waiting, that doesn't matter. We'll just be happy, waiting and working for each other - and dreaming. Oh, dreams will be very sweet now.

There must be a limit to the mistakes one person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I'll be through with them. That's a comforting thought

Isn't it splendid there are so many things to like in this world?

Well, that is all the notes and there is not much else in the paper of any importance. I never take much interest in foreign parts. Who's this Archduke man who has been murdered?"
"What does it matter to us?" asked Miss Cornelia, unaware of the hideous answer to her question, which destiny was even then preparing. "Someone is always murdering or being murdered in those Balkan States. It's their normal condition and I don't really think that our papers ought to publish such shocking things.

Felicity, if I die from the effects of eating sawdust pudding, flavoured with needles, you'll be sorry you ever said such a thing to your poor old uncle, said Uncle Roger reproachfully.

I'm so good that I'll do what you want me to do--for I feel there's something else you want me to do."

"I'm in a scrape and I've been in it all summer. You see"--Emily was very sober--"I am a poetess."

"Holy Mike! That is serious. I don't know if I can do much for you. How long have you been that way?"

"Are you making fun of me?" asked Emily gravely.

Father Cassidy swallowed something besides plum cake.

"The saints forbid! It's only that I'm rather overcome. To be after entertaining a lady av New Moon--and an elf--and a poetess all in one is a bit too much for a humble praste like meself. Have another slice av cake and tell me all about it.

Oh, I'm going to take them," said Miss Cornelia. "Of course, I was glad to, but Mary would have given me no peace till I asked them any way. The Ladies' Aid is going to clean the manse from top to bottom before the bride and groom come back, and Norman Douglas has arranged to fill the cellar with vegetables. Nobody ever saw or heard anything quite like Norman Douglas these days, believe ME. He's so tickled that he's going to marry Ellen West after wanting her all his life. If I was Ellen - but then, I'm not, and if she is satisfied I can very well be. I heard her say years ago when she was a schoolgirl that she didn't want a tame puppy for a husband. There's nothing tame about Norman, believe ME.

People who don't like cats always seem to think there is some peculiar virtue in not liking them.

Kindred spirits alone do not change with the changing years.

I love a book that makes me cry.

P.S.2. I have put in a new pen. And I love you because you aren't pompous like Dr. Carter ... and I love you because you haven't got sticky-out ears like Johnny. And ... the very best reason of all ... I love you for just being Gilbert!

Plum puffs can't minister to a mind diseased or a world that's crumbling to pieces

People who haven't natural gumption never learn," retorted Aunt Jamesina, "neither in college nor life. If they live to be a hundred they really don't know anything more than when they were born.

They had a sort of talent for happiness.

I don't know, I don't want to talk as much. ( ... ) It's nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one's heart, like treasures. I don't like to have them laughed at or wondered over.

An infinite Power must be infinitely little as well as infinitely great. We are neither, therefore there are things too little as well as too great for us to apprehend.

Emily, thus dashed to earth, moved back to her seat in a daze. Her smitten cheek was crimson, but the wound was in her heart. One moment ago in the seventh heaven--and now this--pain, humiliation, misunderstanding!

More than ever at that instant did she long for speech - speech that would conceal and protect where dangerous silence might betray.

And yet ... it's the little things that fret the holes in life ... like moths ... and ruin it.

You're never safe from being surprised until you're dead.

Chippy, pulling his hand from Rilla's. Rilla

No one can be free who has a thousand ancestors.

Life seems like a cup of glory held to my lips just now. But there must be some bitterness in it - there is in every cup. I shall taste mine some day. Well, I hope I shall be strong and brave to meet it. And I hope it won't be through my own fault that it will come.

Every day is a new day without any mistakes in it yet.

Gilbert stretched himself out on the ferns beside the Bubble and looked
approvingly at Anne. If Gilbert had been asked to describe his ideal
woman the description would have answered point for point to Anne, even
to those seven tiny freckles whose obnoxious presence still continued to
vex her soul. Gilbert was as yet little more than a boy; but a boy has
his dreams as have others, and in Gilbert's future there was always a
girl with big, limpid gray eyes, and a face as fine and delicate as a
flower.

APRIL CAME TIPTOEING IN BEAUTIFULLY that year with sunshine and soft winds for a few days; and then a driving northeast snowstorm dropped a white blanket over the world

She came out of her reverie with a deep sigh and looked at him with a dreamy gaze of a soul that had been wandering afar, star-led.

Don't you know that it is only the very foolish folk who talk sense all the time? (Anne)

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.

It was because you looked so happy. Oh, you'll agree with me now that I AM a hateful beast - to hate another woman just because she was happy, - and when her happiness didn't take anything from me! That

It would be lovely to sleep in a wild cherry-tree all white with bloom in the moonshine

Then Diana puts too many murders into [her stories]. She says most of the time she doesn't know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get rid of them.

housewives of the Glen felt it, and