L.M. Montgomery

“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.”

“She had...the glimmerings of a sense of humour - which is simply another name for a sense of the fitness of things.”

“There is such a place as fairyland - but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they have grown so old that they forget the way. One bitter day, when they seek it and cannot find it, they realize what they have lost; and that is the tragedy of life. On that day the gates of Eden are shut behind them and the age of gold is over. Henceforth they must dwell in the common light of common day. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again; and blessed are they above mortals. They, and only they, can bring us tidings from that dear country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles. The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland.”

“Anne laughed."I don't want sunbursts or marble halls, I just want you.”

“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 that would never have existed if I hadn't been born.”

“Red hair is my life long sorrow.”

“People laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas, you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?”

“It will come sometime. Some beautiful morning she will just wake up and find it is Tomorrow. Not Today but Tomorrow. And then things will happen ... wonderful things.”

“I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.”

“Rebellion flamed up in her soul as the dark hours passed by – not because she had no future but because she had no past.”

“After all," Anne had said to Marilla once, "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.”

“True friends are always together in spirit.”

“You noticed that I wore this outfit twice? Why, the only thing you wear twice is a sour expression.”

“There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting.”

“Walter's eyes were very wonderful. All the joy and sorrow and laughter and loyalty and aspirations of many generations lying under the sod looked out of their dark-gray depths.”

“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.”

“My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.”

“Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”

“she was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen pass away, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

“Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps . . . perhaps . . . love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.”

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

“Well, it all comes to this; there's no use trying to live in other people's opinions. The only thing to do is to live in your own. After all, I believe in myself. I'm not so bad and silly as they think me, and I'm not consumptive, and I can write. Now that I've written it all out I feel differently about it. The only thing that still aggravates me is that Miss Potter pitied me -- pitied by a Potter!”

“Oh, it's delightful to have ambitions. I'm so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them-- that's the best of it. Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting.”

“There be three gentle and goodlie things,To be here,To be together, And to think well of one another.”

“The woods are never solitary--they are full of whispering, beckoning, friendly life. But the sea is a mighty soul, forever moaning of some great, unshareable sorrow, which shuts it up into itself for all eternity.”

“But I'd rather look like you than be pretty," she told Anne sincerely.Anne laughed, sipped honey from the tribute, and cast away the sting.”

“there's no use trying to live in other people's opinions. The only thing to do is live in your own.”

“Proverbs are all very fine when there's nothing to worry you, but when you're in real trouble, they're not a bit of help.”

“After all, what could you expect from a pig but a grunt?”

“Well, we all make mistakes, dear, so just put it behind you. We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.”