Lucy Maud Montgomery

You must pay the penalty of growing-up, Paul. You must leave fairyland behind you.

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.

When I think something nice is going to happen I seem to fly right up on the wings of anticipation; and then the first thing I realize I drop down to earth with a thud. But really, Marilla, the flying part is glorious as long as it lasts. . . it's like soaring through a sunset. I think it almost pays for the thud.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'm so glad my window looks east into the sunrising- It's so splendid to see the morning coming up over those long hills and glowing through those sharp fir tops. It's new every morning, and I feel as if I washed my very soul in that bath of earliest sunshine.

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.

It's fun to be almost grown up in some ways, but it's not the kind of fun I expected, Marilla. There's so much to learn and do and think that there isn't time for big words.

Love you! Girl, you're in the very core of my heart. I hold you there like a jewel. Didn't I promise you I'd never tell you a lie? Love you! I love you with all there is of me to love. Heart, soul, brain. Every fibre of body and spirit thrilling to the sweetness of you. There's nobody in the world for me but you, Valancy.

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

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

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.

“You 're not eating anything,” said Marilla sharply, eying her as if it were a serious shortcoming. Anne sighed. “I can 't. I'm in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you are in the depths of despair?”

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.

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. We can never pierce its infinite mystery — we may only wander, awed and spellbound, on the outer fringe of it. The woods call to us with a hundred voices, but the sea has one only — a mighty voice.

Anne’s horizons had closed in since the night she had sat there after coming home from Queen’s; but if the path set before her feet was to be narrow she knew that flowers of quiet happiness would bloom along it. The joys of sincere work and worthy aspiration and congenial friendship were to be hers; nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy or her ideal world of dreams. And there was always the bend in the road!

I have a little brown cocoon of an idea that may possibly expand into a magnificent moth of fulfilment.

It's so dreadful to have nothing to love - life is so empty - and there's nothing worse than emptiness.

She had never before minded being alone. Now she dreaded it. When she was alone now she felt so dreadfully alone.