“Home-life, when one always stays at home, is necessarily narrowing. That is one reason why so many women are petty and unthoughtful of any except their own family's interests. We have hardly begun to live until we can take in the idea of the whole human family as the one to which we truly belong.”

“... it is the greatest of all mistakes to begin life with the expectation that it is going to be easy, or with the wish to have it so.”

“If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it.”

“He who plants a tree, plants a hope.”

“The people we care for aren't always the one we should”

“When we have sampled much and have wandered far and have seen how fleeting and sometimes superficial a lot of the world is, our gratitude grows for the privilege of being part of something we can count on—home and family and the loyalty of loved ones. We come to know what it means to be bound together by duty, by respect, by belonging. We learn that nothing can fully take the place of the blessed relationship of family life.”

“But really, Marilla, one can't stay sad very long in such an interesting world, can one?”