L.M. Montgomery Quotes (113 Quotes)

Oh, of course there's a risk in marrying anybody, but, when it's all said and done, there's many a worse thing than a husband.

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.

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.

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.

You mayn't get the things themselves; but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them.

I wish we could see perfumes as well as smell them. I'm sure they would be very beautiful.

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.

Oh, sometimes I think it is of no use to make friends. They only go out of your life after awhile and leave a hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came.

But I just went to work and imagined that I had on the most beautiful pale blue silk dress - because when you are imagining you might as well imagine something worth while…

It would be so much easier to be good if one's hair was handsome auburn, don't you think?

Red hair is my life long sorrow.

After Davy had gone to bed Anne wandered down to Victoria Island and sat there alone, curtained with fine-spun, moonlit gloom, while the water laughed around her in a duet of brook and wind.

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.

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

And when it tips on a cloud some of them spill out and fall into your sleep.

One can't get over the habit of being a little girl all at once.

But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?

It's all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it's not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?

Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but young men, and the older she gets the worse she is. Young men are all very well in their place, but it doesn't do to drag them into everything, does it?

All life lessons are not learned at college,'she thought. Life teaches them everywhere.

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.

It will come sometime. Some beautiful morning she will just wake up and find it is Tomorrow. Not Today but Tomorrow. And then things will happen ... wonderful things.

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.

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

Do you know what I think Mayflowers are, Marilla? I think they must be the souls of the flowers that died last summer, and this is their heaven.

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

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.

All that Ruby said was so horribly true, she was leaving everything she cared for. She had laid up her treasures on earth only. She had lived solely for the little things of life, the things that pass, forgetting the great things that go onward into eternity bridging the gulf between the two lives and making of death a mere passing of one dwelling to the other. From twilight to unclouded day. ...it was no wonder her soul clung in blind helplessness to the only things she knew and loved.

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…

But she had long ago learned that when she wandered into the realm of fancy she must go alone. The way to it was by an enchanted path where not even her dearest might follow her.

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

Do you think amethysts can be the souls of good violets?

It's delightful when your imaginations come true, isn't it?

That's one splendid thing about such affairs - it's so lovely to look back to them.

Anne looked at the white young mother with a certain awe that had never entered into her feelings for Diana before. Could this pale woman with the rapture in her eyes be the little black-curled, rosy-cheeked Diana she had played with in vanished schooldays? It gave her a queer desolate feeling that she herself somehow belonged only in those past years and had no business in the present at all.

I've been feeling a little blue - just a pale, elusive azure.

Everything that's worth having is some trouble…

That's the worst…or the best…of real life, Anne. It won't let you be miserable. It keeps on trying to make you comfortable…and succeeding…even when you're determined to be unhappy and romantic.

Don't be very frightened, Marilla. I was walking the ridge-pole and I fell off. I suspect I have sprained my ankle. But, Marilla, I might have broken my neck. Let us look on the bright side of things.

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

The eastern sky above the firs was flushed faintly pink from the reflection of the west, and Anne was wondering dreamily if the spirit of color looked like that…

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.

Kindred spirits alone do not change with the changing years.

How sympathetic you look, Anne…as sympathetic as only seventeen can look.

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

Don't you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back?

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?

There was no mistaking her sincerity--it breathed in every tone of her voice. Both Marilla and Mrs. Lynde recognized its unmistakable ring. But the former understood in dismay that Anne was actually enjoying her valley of humiliation--was reveling in the thoroughness of her abasement. Where was the wholesome punishment upon which she, Marilla, had plumed herself? Anne had turned it into a species of positive pleasure.

Anybody is liable to rheumatism in her legs, Anne. It's only old people who should have rheumatism in their souls, though. Thanks goodness, I never have. When you get rheumatism in your soul you might as well go and pick out your coffin.

Mrs. Lynde says Mrs. Wrights grandfather stole a sheep but Marilla says we mustent speak ill of the dead. Why mustent we, Anne? I want to know. It's pretty safe ain't it?