Lucy Maud Montgomery Quotations

Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it.

Twilight drops her curtain down, and pins it with a star.

In this world you've just got to hope for the best and prepare for the worst and take whatever God sends.

That is one good thing about this world... there are always sure to be more springs.

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

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.

There are so many unpleasant things in the world already that there is no use in imagining any more.

It only seems as if you're doing something when you worry.

We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.

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.

As a rule, I am very careful to be shallow and conventional where depth and originality are wasted.

I'm not a bit changed - not really. I'm only just pruned down and branched out. The real me - back here - is just the same.

Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I'd do. I'd go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I'd look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I'd just feel a prayer.

But you have such dimples," said Anne, smiling affectionately into the pretty, vivacious face so near her own. "Lovely dimples, like little dents in cream. I have given up all hope of dimples. My dimple-dream will never come true; but so many of my dreams have that I mustn't complain. Am I all ready now?

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.

If a kiss could be seen it would look like a violet.

Mrs. Spencer said it was wicked of me to talk like that, but I didn’t mean to be wicked. It’s so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn’t it?

Gilbert took from his desk a little pink candy heart with a gold motto on it, “You are sweet,” and slipped it under the curve of Anne’s arm. Whereupon Anne arose, took the pink heart gingerly between the tips of her fingers, dropped it on the floor, ground it to powder beneath her heel, and resumed her position without deigning to bestow a glance on Gilbert.

You'd find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair," said Anne reproachfully. "People who haven't red hair don't know what trouble is.

I have learned to look upon each little hindrance as a jest and each great one as a foreshadowing of victory.

We are both going to pray that we may live together all our lives and die the same day.

Why is it that the nicest things never are healthy?

She asked me what made me do such a thing. That is an awkward question because I often can't tell what makes me do things. Sometimes I do them just to find out what I feel like doing them. And sometimes I do them because I want to have some exciting things to tell my grandchildren.

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

A plate of apples, an open fire, and a jolly good book are a fair substitute for heaven.

I was very much provoked. Of course, I knew there are no fairies; but that needn't prevent my thinking there is.

A cold in the head in June is an immoral thing...

It always amazes me to look at the little, wrinkled brown seeds and think of the rainbows in 'em," said Captain Jim. "When I ponder on them seeds I don't find it nowise hard to believe that we've got souls that'll live in other worlds. You couldn't hardly believe there was life in them tiny things, some no bigger than grains of dust, let alone colour and scent, if you hadn't seen the miracle, could you?

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.

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

It's so hard to get up again—although of course the harder it is the more satisfaction you have when you do get up, haven't you?

Don't look at me so sorrowfully and so disapprovingly, dearest. I can't be sober and serious - everything looks so rosy and rainbowy to me.

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.

How fair the realm Imagination opens to the view,

It’s so much more romantic to end a story up with a funeral than a wedding.

Thank goodness air and salvation are still free...and so is laughter.

Rilla was fond of italics, as most girls of fifteen are.

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

I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I've never been able to believe it. I don't believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage.

I love to smell flowers in the dark," she said. "You get hold of their soul then.

Anne always remembered the silvery, peaceful beauty and fragrant calm of that night. It was the last night before sorrow touched her life; and no life is ever quite the same again when once that cold, sanctifying touch has been laid upon it.

But it ain't our feelings we have to steer by through life--no, no, we'd make shipwreck mighty often if we did that. There's only the one safe compass and we've got to set our course by that--what it's right to do.

We ought always to try to influence others for good.

In imagination she sailed over storied seas that wash the distant shining shores of "faëry lands forlorn," where lost Atlantis and Elysium lie, with the evening star for pilot, to the land of Heart's Desire. And she was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen pass away, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

The body grows slowly and steadily but the soul grows by leaps and bounds. It may come to its full stature in an hour.

A bosom friend - an intimate friend, you know - a really kindred spirit to whom I can confide my inmost soul.

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

I feel as if I had opened a book and found roses of yesterday sweet and fragrant, between its leaves.

There was something in her movements that made you think she never walked but always danced.

Nathan always believed his wife was trying to poison him but he didn't seem to mind. He said it made life kind of exciting.

I like to hear a storm at night. It is so cosy to snuggle down among the blankets and feel that it can't get at you.

Welcome, Anne. I thought you'd come today. You belong to the afternoon so it brought you. Things that belong together are sure to come together. What a lot of trouble that would save some people if they only knew it. But they don't...and so they waste beautiful energy moving heaven and earth to bring things together that don't belong.

Despair is a free man--hope is a slave.

It's the fools that make all the trouble in the world, not the wicked.

The only thing I envy about a cat is its purr," remarked Dr. Blythe once, listening to Doc's resonant melody. "It is the most contented sound in the world.

It was November--the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep, sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind-songs in the pines. Anne roamed through the pineland alleys in the park and, as she said, let that great sweeping wind blow the fogs out of her soul.

That's all the freedom we canhope for - the freedom to choose our prison. [...]

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?

I am well in body though considerably rumpled up in spirit.

You are the only person who loves me in the world," said Elizabeth. "When you talk to me I smell violets.

…there was something about her that made you feel it was safe to tell her secrets.

I hate to lend a book I love…it never seems quite the same when it comes back to me…

Don't be ridiculous, please.' The most insulting words in the world!

She suddenly found herself laughing without bitterness.

Isn't it terrible the way some unworthy folks are loved, while others that deserve it far more, you'd think, never get much affection?

Fairyland is the loveliest word because it means everything the human heart desires.

She looked like a head-on collision between a fashion plate and a nightmare.

I doubt if I shall ever have time to read the book again -- there are too many new ones coming out all the time which I want to read. Yet an old book has something for me which no new book can ever have -- for at every reading the memories and atmosphere of other readings come back and I am reading old years as well as an old book.

But there is always a November space after the leaves have fallen when she felt it was almost indecent to intrude on the woods…for their glory terrestrial had departed and their glory celestial of spirit and purity and whiteness had not yet come upon them.

Anne was always glad in the happiness of her friends; but it is sometimes a little lonely to be surrounded everywhere by happiness that is not your own.

Jane's stories are too sensible. Then Diana puts too much murders into hers. She says most of the time she doesn't know what to do with the people so she kills the off to get rid of them." -Anne Shirley

She seemed to walk in an atmosphere of things about to happen.

I know I haven't much sense or sobriety, but I've got what is ever so much better — the knack of making people like me.

We've had a beautiful friendship, Diana. We've never marred it by one quarrel or coolness or unkind word; and I hope it will always be so. But things can't be quite the same after this. You'll have other interests. I'll just be on the outside.

I wish I were dead, or that it were tomorrow night,' groaned Phil.

Words aren't made — they grow,' said Anne.

But was anything in life, Anne asked herself wearily, like one's imagination of it?

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.

She had dreamed some brilliant dreams during the past winter and now they lay in the dust around her. In her present mood of self-disgust, she could not immediately begin dreaming again. And she discovered that, while solitude with dreams is glorious, solitude without them has few charms.

You'd find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair." — Anne Shirley

I'm afraid our old world has come to an end, Rilla. We've got to face the fact. (Walter)

...the sorrows God sent us brought comfort and strength with them, while the sorrows we brought on ourselves, through folly or wickedness, were by far the hardest to bear.

Who would endure life if it were not for the hope of death?

Steal not this book for fear of shame For on it is the owners name And when you die the Lord will say Where is the book you stole away And when you say you do not know The Lord will say go down below.

Don't try to write anything you can't feel - it will be a failure - 'echoes nothing worth

War was a hellish, horrible hideous thing - too horrible and hideous to happen in the twentieth century between civilised nations.

Houses are like people - some you like and some you don't like - and once in a while there is one you love.

I know you're a fool, Jim Hardy, but for heaven's sake pretend you're not for five minutes.

I don't know which is worse - to have somebody you DON'T like ask you to marry him or NOT have some one you DO like. Both are rather unpleasant.

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

It's dreadful what little things lead people to misunderstand each other.

Since ever the world was spinning And till the world shall end You've your man in the beginning Or you have him in the end, But to have him from start to finish And neither nor borrow nor lend Is what all of the girls are wanting And none of the gods can send

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

I'd write of people and places like I knew, and I'd make my characters talk everyday English; and I'd let the sun rise and set in the usual quiet way without much fuss over the fact. If I had to have villains at all, I'd give them a chance, Anne--I'd give them a chance. There are some terrible bad men the world, I suppose, but you'd have to go a long piece to find them...But most of us have got a little decency somewhere in us. Keep on writing, Anne.

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 be begun here on earth.

To dispair is to turn your back on God.

I've just been imagining that it was really me you wanted after all and that I was to stay here for ever and ever. It was a great comfort while it lasted. But the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you have to stop and that hurts.

Oh Marilla, looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them," exclaimed Anne.

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 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!