Lucy maud montgomery quotes

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

Blessings be the inventor of the alphabet, pen and printing press! Life would be -- to me in all events -- a terrible thing without books.

Nobody is ever too old to dream. And dreams never grow old.

Snow in April is abominable," said Anne. "Like a slap in the face when you expect a kiss.

Maples are such sociable trees ... They're always rustling and whispering to you.

Life, deal gently with her ... Love, never desert her

There is so much in the world for us all if we only have the eyes to see it, and the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it to ourselves--so much in men and women, so much in art and literature, so much everywhere in which to delight, and for which to be thankful.

We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self denial, anxiety and discouragement.

It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.

If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you'll never be and you need not waste time in trying.

If you can't be cheerful, be as cheerful as you can.

Dogs want only love but cats demand worship.

Have you ever noticed that when people say it is their duty to tell you a certain thing you may prepare for something disagreeable? Why is it that they never seem to think it a duty to tell you the pleasant things they hear about you?

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

To dispair is to turn your back on God.

She will love deeply--suffer terribly--she will have glorious moments to compensate.

Because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worth while.

Nasturtiums, who colored you, you wonderful, glowing things? You must have been fashioned out of summer sunsets.

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.

When twilight drops her curtain down And pins it with a star Remember that you have a friend Though she may wander far.

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

I'd like to add some beauty to life," said Anne dreamily. "I don't exactly want to make people KNOW more... though I know that IS the noblest ambition... but I'd love to make them have a pleasanter time because of me... to have some little joy or happy thought that would never have existed if I hadn't been born.

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 know all about everything, would it? There'd be no scope for imagination then, would there?But am I talking too much? People are always telling me I do. Would you rather I didn't talk? If you say so I'll stop. I can STOP when I make up my mind to it, although it's difficult.

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.

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

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

Look, do you see that poem?' she said suddenly, pointing.

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.

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.

Everything is new in the spring. Springs themselves are always so new, too. No spring is ever just like any other spring. It always has something of its own to be its own peculiar sweetness.

It is never quite safe to think we have done with life. When we imagine we have finished our story fate has a trick of turning the page and showing us yet another chapter.

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

It was really dreadful to be so different from other people…and yet rather wonderful, too, as if you were a being strayed from another star.

After all," Anne had said to Marilla once, "I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.

Some people go through life trying to find out what the world holds for them only to find out too late that it's what they bring to the world that really counts.

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

To love is easy and therefore common - but to understand - how rare it is!

Dear old world', she murmured, 'you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.

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

...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.

It's bad enough to feel insignificant, but it's unbearable to have it grained into your soul that you will never, can never, be anything but insignificant.

We ought always to try to influence others for good.

It was October again ... a glorious October, all red and gold, with mellow mornings when the valleys were filled with delicate mists as if the spirit of autumn had poured them in for the sun to drain - amethyst, pearl, silver, rose, and smoke-blue. The dews were so heavy that the fields glistened like cloth of silver and there were such heaps of rustling leaves in the hollows of many-stemmed woods to run crisply through.

All things great are wound up with all things little.

I feel as though someone's handed me the moon... and I don't exactly know what to do with it.

I couldn't live where there were no trees--something vital in me would starve.

It has always seemed to me. ever since early childhood, amid all the commonplaces of life, i was very near to a kingdom of ideal beauty. Between it and me hung only a thin veil. I could never draw it quite aside, but sometimes a wind fluttered it and I caught a glimpse of the enchanting realms beyond-only a glimpse-but those glimpses have always made life worthwhile.

A house isn't a home without the ineffable contentment of a cat with its tail folded about its feet. A cat gives mystery, charm, suggestion.

Facts are stubborn things, but, as some one has wisely said, not half so stubborn as fallacies.

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

I know that in everybody's life must come days of depression and discouragement when all things in life seem to lose savour. The sunniest day has its clouds;but one must not forget the sun is there all the time.

Kindred spirits alone do not change with the changing years.

Poor soul, she always knew everything about her neighbors, but she never was very well acquainted with herself.

The world is always young again for just a few moments at the dawn.

Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it.

For there is no bond more lasting than that formed by the mutual confidences of that magic time when youth is slipping from the sheath of childhood and beginning to wonder what lies for it beyond those misty hills that bound the golden road.

Everything that's worth having is some trouble.

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.

Their happiness was in each others keeping, and both were unafraid.

You never know what peace is until you walk on the shores or in the fields or along the winding red roads of Prince Edward Island in a summer twilight when the dew is falling and the old stars are peeping out and the sea keeps its mighty tryst with the little land it loves. You find your soul then. You realize that youth is not a vanished thing but something that dwells forever in the heart.

If we don't chase things, sometimes the things following us can catch up." -L.M. Montgomery

Isn't it better to have your heart broken than to have it wither up? Before it could be broken it must have felt something splendid. That would be worth the pain.

I wouldn't want to marry anybody who was wicked, but I think I'd like it if he could be wicked and wouldn't.

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.

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

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

She wanted to be alone - to think things out - to adjust herself, if it were possible, to the new world in which she seemed to have been transplanted with a suddenness and completeness that left her half bewildered to her own identity.

A good laugh is as good as a prayer sometimes.

Truth exists, only lies have to be invented.

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.

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

Of all the uncertain things marriage is the uncertainest.

The woods call to us with a hundred voices, but the sea has one only — a mighty voice that drowns our souls in its majestic music. The woods are human, but the sea is of the company of the archangels.

I shall give life here my best, and I believe it will give its best to me in return.

It's not what the world holds for you. It's what you bring to it.

I am simply a book drunkard.

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.

The beauty of winter is that it makes you appreciate spring.

The world looks like something God had just imaged for his own pleasure, doesn't it?

Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.

We don't know where we're going, but isn't is fun to go?

Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps . . . perhaps . . . love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.

I'm just tired of everything…even of the echoes. There is nothing in my life but echoes…echoes of lost hopes and dreams and joys. They're beautiful and mocking.

And if you couldn't be loved, the next best thing was to be let alone.

But Anne with her elbows on the window sill, her soft cheek laid against her clasped hands, and her eyes filled with visions, looked out unheedingly across city roof and spire to that glorious dome of sunset sky and wove her dreams of a possible future from the golden tissue of youth's own optimism. All the Beyond was hers, with its possibilities lurking rosily in the oncoming years — each year a rose of promise to be woven into an immortal chaplet.

I've come home in love with loneliness

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!

…the Lake of Shining Waters was blue — blue — blue; not the changeful blue of spring, nor the pale azure of summer, but a clear, steadfast, serene blue, as if the water were past all modes and tenses of emotion and had settled down to a tranquillity unbroken by fickle dreams.

She had a way of embroidering life with stars.

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

Nothing ever seems impossible in spring, you know.

I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.

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

Whenever you looked forward to anything pleasant you were sure to be more or less disappointed . . . perhaps that is true. But there is a good side to it too. The bad things don't always come up to your expectations either . . . they nearly always turn out ever so much better than you think.

There are many worse friends than the soft, silent, furry, cat-folk.

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

There be three gentle and goodlie things, To be here, To be together, And to think well of one another.

there's no use trying to live in other people's opinions. The only thing to do is live in your own.

But just think what a dull world it would be if everyone was sensible,' pleaded Anne.

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

There is such a place as fairyland - but only children can find the way to it...until they have grown so old that they forget the way. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again...The world calls them singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland.

How fair the realm Imagination opens to the view.

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.

The night was clear and frosty, all ebony of shadow and silver of snowy slope; big stars were shining over the silent fields; here and there the dark pointed firs stood up with snow powdering their branches and the wind whistling through them.

Gossip lies nine times and tells a half truth the tenth.

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

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.

You were never poor as long as you had something to love.

[she] had a great reputation for unselfishness because she was always giving up a lot of things she didn't want.

The ghosts of things that never happened are worse than the ghosts of things that did.

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

There isn't any such thing as an ordinary life. (92)

We came to the comforting conclusion that the Creator probably knew how to run His universe quite as well as we do, and that, after all, there are no such things as 'wasted' lives, saving and except when am individual wilfully squanders and wastes his own life.

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

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

There are a great many people who do not understand things so there is no use in telling them.

never write a line you'd be ashamed to read at your own funeral.

let's not borrow trouble. The rate of interest is too high.

I must get out all my ambitions and dust them.

I believe flowers have souls. I have known roses that I expect to meet in heaven.

No one can be free who has a thousand ancestors.

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.

I know I chatter on far too much... but if you only knew how many things I want to say and don't. Give me SOME credit.

Saying one's prayers isn't exactly the same thing as praying.

There might be some hours of loneliness. But there was something wonderful even in loneliness. At least you belonged to yourself when you were lonely.