L.M. Montgomery

“Listen to the trees talking in their sleep,' she whispered, as he lifted her to the ground. 'What nice dreams they must have!”

“Oh, here we are at the bridge. I'm going to shut my eyes tight. I’m always afraid going over bridges. I can't help imagining that perhaps, just as we get to the middle, they'll crumple up like a jackknife and nip us. So I shut my eyes. But I always have to open them for all when I think we're getting near the middle. Because, you see, if the bridge did crumple up I'd want to see it crumple. What a jolly rumble it makes! I always like the rumble part of it. Isn't it splendid there are so many things to like in this world? There, we're over. Now I'll look back. Good night, dear Lake of Shining Waters. I always say good night to the things I love, just as I would to people. I think they like it. That water looks as if it was smiling at me.”

“Mrs. Spencer said that my tongue must be hung in the middle. But it isn't — it's firmly fastened at one end.”

“But I just went to work and imagined that I had on the most beautiful pale blue silk dress — because when you are imagining you might as well imagine something worth while…”

“It's delightful when your imaginations come true, isn't it?”

“Here sat Marilla Cuthbert, when she sat at all, slightly distrustful of sunshine, which seemed to her too dancing and irresponsible a thing for a world which was meant to be taken seriously…”

“Nobody whom this war has touched will ever be happy again in quite the same way. But it will be a better happiness, I think, little sister - a happiness we've earned.”

“And when it tips on a cloud some of them spill out and fall into your sleep.”

“Yes; but if dryads are foolish they must take the consequences, just as if they were real people," said Paul gravely. "Do you know what I think about the new moon, teacher? I think it is a little golden boat full of dreams.”

“If any person wants to see clearly just how much she has changed - whether for better or worse - let her revisit after some lapse of time any place where she has ones lived. She will meet her former self at every turn, with every familiar face, in every old recollection ... She will see how much she has gained in some respects, how much she has lost - irretrievably lost - in others.”

“I love them, they are so nice and selfish. Dogs are TOO good and unselfish. They make me feel uncomfortable. But cats are gloriously human.”

“She had a way of embroidering life with stars.”

“I can just imagine myself sitting down at the head of the table and pouring out the tea," said Anne, shutting her eyes ecstatically. "And asking Diana if she takes sugar! I know she doesn't but of course I'll ask her just as if I didn't know.”

“I'm in the depths of despair!" (Anne of Green Gables)”

“Our sacrifice is greater than his," cried Rilla passionately. "Our boys give only themselves. We give them.”

“Well, all I hope," said Miss Cornelia calmly, "is that when I'm dead nobody will call me 'our departed sister.”

“Captain Jim thought women were delightful creatures, who ought to have the vote, and everything else they wanted, bless their hearts; but he did not believe they could write.”

“Besides, I've been feeling a little blue — just a pale, elusive azure. It isn't serious enough for anything darker.”

“Well, I don't know," said the Story Girl thoughtfully. "I think there are two kinds of true thing - true things that are, and true things that are not, but might be.”

“In the elder days of artBuilders wrought with greatest careEach minute and unseen part,For the gods see everywhere,”

“None of us ever do," said Mrs. Allan with a sigh. "But then, Anne, you know what Lowell says, 'Not failure but low aim is crime.' We must have ideals and try to live up to them, even if we never quite succeed. Life would be a sorry business without them. With them it's grand and great. Hold fast to your ideals, Anne.”

“How fair the realmImagination opens to the view,”

“I'm glad I never had any children,' said Cousin Sarah. 'If they don't break your heart in one way they do it in another.' 'Isn't it better to have your heart broken than to have it wither up?' queried Valancy. 'Before it could be broken it must have felt something splendid. That would be worth the pain.”

“We belong to the race that knows Joseph”

“Good night, belovedest. Your sleep will be sweet if there is any influences in the wishes of your own.”

“Anne came dancing home in the purple winter twilight across the snowy places.”

“Yes, it's beautiful,' said Gilbert, looking steadily down into Anne's uplifted face, 'but wouldn't it have been more beautiful still, Anne, if there had been no separation or misunderstanding . . . if they had come hand in hand all the way through life, with no memories behind them but those which belonged to each other?”

“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.”

“It's so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn't it?”

“A woman cannot ever be sure of not being married till she is buried, Mrs. Doctor, dear, and meanwhile I will make a batch of cherry pies.”

“He was one of your wicked, fascinating men. After he got married he left off being fascinating and just kept on being wicked.”

“I never fancied cats much till I found the First Mate," he remarked, to the accompaniment of the Mate's tremendous purrs. "I saved his life, and when you've saved a creature's life you're bound to love it. It's next thing to giving life.”

“Nothing mattered much to me for a time there, after you told me you could never love me, Anne. There was nobody else -- there never could be anybody else for me but you. I've loved you ever since that day you broke your slate over my head in school.”

“I have a dream," he said slowly. "I persist in dreaming it, although it has often seemed to me that it could never come true. I dream of a home with a hearth-fire in it, a cat and dog, the footsteps of friends -- and you!”

“I wish we could see perfumes as well as smell them. I'm sure they would be very beautiful.”

“Gilbert darling, don't let's ever be afraid of things. It's such dreadful slavery. Let's be daring and adventurous and expectant. Let's dance to meet life and all it can bring to us, even if it brings scads of trouble and typhoid and twins!" (Anne to Gilbert)”

“Nothing worth while is every easy come by.”

“I wish every one in the world was as warm and sheltered as we are tonight.”

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

“Fancies are like shadows...you can't cage them, they're such wayward, dancing things.”

“People who haven’t red hair don’t know what trouble is.”

“It's all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it's not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?”

“...Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive--it's such an interesting world. It wouldn't be half so interesting if we knew all about everything, would it? There'd be no scope for imagination then, would there?”

“Which would you rather be if you had the choice--divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?”

“But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?”

“Anne had wandered down the the Dryard's Bubble and was curled up among the ferns at the root of the n=big white birch where sher and Gilbert had so often sat ion summers gone by. Hew had gone into the newspaper office again when college was closed, and Avonlea seemed very dull without him. He never wrote to her, and Anne missed the letters that neer came. To be sure, Roy wrote twice a week; his letters were exquisite compositions which would have read beautifully in a memoir or biography. Anne felt herself more deeply in love with him that ever when she read the; but her heart never game that queer, quick, painful bound at sight of his letters which had given one day when Mrs. Hiram Sloane had handed her out an envelope addressed in Gilbert's black, upright handwriting. Anne had hurried home to the east gable and opened it eagrly--to find a typewritten copy of some college society report--"only that and nothing more." Anne flung the harmless screed across her room and sat down to write and especially nice epistle to Roy”

“She turned to Roy with her gayest expression. He smiled back at her with what Phil called "his deep, black, velvety smile." Yet, she really did not see Roy at all. She was acutely conscious that Gilbert was standing under the palms just across the room talking to a girl who must be Christine Stuart”

“I wonder if it will be—can be—any more beautiful than this,’ murmured Anne, looking around her with the loving, enraptured eyes of those to whom ‘home’ must always be the loveliest spot in the world, no matter what fairer lands may lie under alien stars.”

“Have you ever noticed how many silences there are Gilbert? The silence of the woods....of the shore....of the meadows....of the night....of the summer afternoon. All different because the undertones that thread them are different.”

“I am afraid to speak or move for the fear all this wonderful beauty will vanish just like a broken silence”