Lucy Maud Montgomery

“Life is worth living as long as there's a laugh in it.”

“When I left Queen's my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe that the best does.”

“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.”

“You may tire of reality but you never tire of dreams.”

“Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.”

“Mrs. Cadbury: Tell me what you know about yourself.Anne Shirley: Well, it really isn't worth telling, Mrs. Cadbury... but if you let me tell you what I IMAGINE about myself you'd find it a lot more interesting.”

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

“Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight. The evening had changed something for her. Life held a different meaning, a deeper purpose. On the surface it would go on just the same; but the deeps had been stirred. It must not be the same with her as with poor butterfly Ruby. When she came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with the shrinking terror of something wholly different--something for which accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must begin here on earth. That goodnight in the garden was for all time. Anne never saw Ruby in life again.”

“Make them do as you want them to," she said."I can’t," mourned Anne. "Averil is such an unmanageable heroine. She will do and say things I never meant her to. Then that spoils everything that went before and I have to write it all over again.”

“Miss Barry was a kindred spirit after all," Anne confided to Marilla, "You wouldn't think so to look at her, but she is. . . Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”

“Look at that sea, girls--all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn't enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.”

“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.”

“Humor is the spiciest condiment in the feast of existence. Laugh at your mistakes but learn from them, joke over your troubles but gather strength from them, make a jest of your difficulties but overcome them.”

“What are you going to do with the money Anne? Let's all go up town and get drunk!”

“I am very careful to be shallow and conventional where depth and originality are wasted.”

“It's not vanity to know your own good points. It would just be stupidity if you didn't; It's only vanity when you get puffed up about them.”