L.M. Montgomery Quotes

Well, it all comes to this, there's no use trying to live in other people's opinions. The only thing to do is to live in our own.
L.M. Montgomery
What's the matter with you, Penny? You're not as good looking as you generally believe you are.
L.M. Montgomery
Even eighty-odd is sometimes vulnerable to vanity.
L.M. Montgomery
The trouble with you people is that you don't laugh enough.
L.M. Montgomery
It only seems as if you are doing something when you're worrying.
L.M. Montgomery
Anyone who has gumption knows what it is and anyone who hasn't can never know what it is.
L.M. Montgomery
The point of good writing is knowing when to stop.
L.M. Montgomery
What had seemed easy in imagination was rather hard in reality.
L.M. Montgomery
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.
L.M. Montgomery
What had seemed easy in imagination was rather hard in reality.
L.M. Montgomery
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.
L.M. Montgomery
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.
L.M. Montgomery
A suffering or tortured animal always filled her with such a surge of sympathy that it lifted her clean out of herself.
L.M. Montgomery
It's the worst kind of cruelty — the thoughtless kind. You can't cope with it.
L.M. Montgomery
When will the others come?"And there is one who will never come. At least we will not see him if he does. But, oh, when I think he will be there--when our Canadian soldiers return there will be a shadow army with them--the army of the fallen. We will not *see* them--but they will be there!
L.M. Montgomery
I never see a ship sailing out of the channel, or a gull soaring over the sand-bar, without wishing I were on board the ship or had wings, not like a dove 'to fly away and be at rest,’ but like a gull, to sweep out into the very heart of the storm.
L.M. Montgomery
I don't believe Old Nick can be so very ugly,' said Aunt Jamesina reflectively. 'He wouldn't do so much harm if he was. I always think of him as a rather handsome gentleman.
L.M. Montgomery
Anne reveled in the world of color about her."Oh, Marilla," she exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing in with her arms full of gorgeous boughs, "I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn't it? Look at these maple branches. Don't they give you a thrill--several thrills?
L.M. Montgomery
November is usually such a disagreeable month...as if the year had suddenly found out that she was growing old and could do nothing but weep and fret over it. This year is growing old gracefully...just like a stately old lady who knows she can be charming even with gray hair and wrinkles. We've had lovely days and delicious twilights.
L.M. Montgomery
November--with uncanny witchery in its changed trees. With murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson behind the westering hills. With dear days when the austere woods were beautiful and gracious in a dignified serenity of folded hands and closed eyes--days full of a fine, pale sunshine that sifted through the late, leafless gold of the juniper-trees and glimmered among the grey beeches, lighting up evergreen banks of moss and washing the colonnades of the pines. Days with a high-sprung sky of flawless turquoise. Days when an exquisite melancholy seemed to hang over the landscape and dream about the lake. But days, too, of the wild blackness of great autumn storms, followed by dank, wet, streaming nights when there was witch-laughter in the pines and fitful moans among the mainland trees. What cared they? Old Tom had built his roof well, and his chimney drew.
L.M. Montgomery
This afternoon I sat at my window and alternately wrote at my new serial and watched a couple of dear, amusing, youngish maple-trees at the foot of the garden. They whispered secrets to each other all the afternoon. They would bend together and talk earnestly for a few moments, then spring back and look at each other, throwing up their hands comically in horror and amazement over their mutual revelations. I wonder what new scandal is afoot in Treeland.
L.M. Montgomery
You noticed that I wore this outfit twice? Why, the only thing you wear twice is a sour expression.
L.M. Montgomery
If you've brains it's better than beauty - brains last, beauty doesn't.
L.M. Montgomery
Jimmy Murray, you are an ass,' said Aunt Ruth, angrily.'Well, we're cousins,' agreed Cousin Jimmy pleasantly.
L.M. Montgomery
I have been reading three books Dean lent me this week. One was like a rose garden--very pleasant, but just a little too sweet. And one was like a pine wood on a mountain--full of balsam and tang--I loved it, and yet it filled me with a sort of despair. It was written so beautifully--I can never write like that, I feel sure. And one--it was just like a pig-sty. Dean gave me that one by mistake.
L.M. Montgomery
Gilbert put his arm about them. 'Oh, you mothers!' he said. 'You mothers! God knew what He was about when He made you.
L.M. Montgomery
Most young men are such bores. They haven't lived long enough to learn that they are not the wonders to the world they are to their mothers.
L.M. Montgomery
What I want to get out of my college course is some knowledge of the best way of living life and doing the most and best with it. I want to learn to understand and help other people and myself.
L.M. Montgomery
Well, I should like to see you go to college, Anne, but if you never do, don't grow discontented about it. We make our own lives wherever we are, after all... college can only help us do it more easily.
L.M. Montgomery
Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight. The evening had changed something for her. Life held a different meaning, a deeper purpose. On the surface it would go on just the same; but the deeps had been stirred. It must not be the same with her as with poor butterfly Ruby. When she came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with the shrinking terror of something wholly different--something for which accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. 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 begin here on earth. That goodnight in the garden was for all time. Anne never saw Ruby in life again.
L.M. Montgomery
How sadly things had changed since she had sat there the night after coming home! Then she had been full of hope and joy and the future had looked rosy with promise. Anne felt as if she had lived years since then, but before she went to bed there was a smile on her lips and peace in her heart. She had looked her duty courageously in the face and found it a friend--as duty ever is when we meet it frankly.
L.M. Montgomery
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.
L.M. Montgomery
I'm really a very happy, contented little person in spite of my broken heart.
L.M. Montgomery
I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.
L.M. Montgomery
Today has been a day dropped out of June into April.
L.M. Montgomery
Just to love! She did not ask to be loved. It was rapture enough just to sit there beside him in silence, alone in the summer night in the white splendor of moonshine, with the wind blowing down on them out of the pine woods.
L.M. Montgomery
All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer — one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going — one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doing, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world.
L.M. Montgomery
Stop a bit and think it over. There do be some knots mighty aisy to tie but the untying is a cat of a different brade.
L.M. Montgomery
I read somewhere once that souls were like flowers,' said Priscilla.'Then your soul is a golden narcissus,' said Anne, 'and Diana's is like a red, red rose. Jane's is an apple blossom, pink and wholesome and sweet.''And our own is a white violet, with purple streaks in its heart,' finished Priscilla.
L.M. Montgomery
I love a book that makes me cry.
L.M. Montgomery
But now she loved winter. Winter was beautiful "up back" - almost intolerably beautiful. Days of clear brilliance. Evenings that were like cups of glamour - the purest vintage of winter's wine. Nights with their fire of stars. Cold, exquisite winter sunrises. Lovely ferns of ice all over the windows of the Blue Castle. Moonlight on birches in a silver thaw. Ragged shadows on windy evenings - torn, twisted, fantastic shadows. Great silences, austere and searching. Jewelled, barbaric hills. The sun suddenly breaking through grey clouds over long, white Mistawis. Ice-grey twilights, broken by snow-squalls, when their cosy living-room, with its goblins of firelight and inscrutable cats, seemed cosier than ever. Every hour brought a new revalation and wonder.
L.M. Montgomery
March came in that winter like the meekest and mildest of lambs, bringing days that were crisp and golden and tingling, each followed by a frosty pink twilight which gradually lost itself in an elfland of moonshine.
L.M. Montgomery
He was so lonely that he laughed at himself.
L.M. Montgomery
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.
L.M. Montgomery
Who would endure life if it were not for the hope of death?
L.M. Montgomery
...a little "appreciation" sometimes does quite as much good as all the conscientious "bringing up" in the world.
L.M. Montgomery
Ilse and I hunted all over the old orchard today for a four-leaved clover and couldn't find one. Then I found one in a clump of clover by the dairy steps tonight when I was straining the milk and never thinking of clovers. Cousin Jimmy says that is the way luck always comes, and it is no use to look for it.
L.M. Montgomery
Folks say I've never been quite right since - but they only say that because I'm a poet, and because nothing ever worries me. Poets are so rare in Blair Water folks don't understand them, and most people worry so much, they think you're not right if you don't worry.
L.M. Montgomery
The ghosts of things that never happened are worse than the ghosts of things that did.
L.M. Montgomery
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.
L.M. Montgomery
It is ever so much easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable.
L.M. Montgomery
Isn’t that a view worth looking at? Nice and far from the marketplace, ain’t it? No buying and selling and getting gain. You don’t have to pay anything- all that sea and sky free- 'without money and without price.
L.M. Montgomery
No one can be free who has a thousand ancestors.
L.M. Montgomery
She suddenly found herself laughing without bitterness.
L.M. Montgomery
People who don't like cats always seem to think there is some peculiar virtue in not liking them.
L.M. Montgomery
Cousin Jimmy thinks I did perfectly right. Cousin Jimmy would think I had done perfectly right if I had murdered Andrew and buried him in the Land of Uprightness. It's very nice to have one friend like that, though too many wouldn't be good for you.
L.M. Montgomery
Pat wanted to comfort him for something she did not understand. She slipped her little hand into his...he had a warm pleasant hand. They walked home together so.
L.M. Montgomery
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.
L.M. Montgomery
That family of Elliotts has always been more stubborn than natteral. Marshall's brother Alexander had a dog he set great store by, and when it died the man actilly wanted to have it buried in the graveyard, 'along with the other Christians,' he said. Course, he wasn't allowed to; so he buried it just outside the graveyard fence, and never darkened the church door again. But Sundays he'd drive his family to church and sit by that dog's grave and read his Bible all the time service was going on. They say when he was dying he asked his wife to bury him beside the dog; she was a meek little soul but she fired up at THAT. She said SHE wasn't going to be buried beside no dog, and if he'd rather have his last resting place beside the dog than beside her, jest to say so. Alexander Elliott was a stubborn mule, but he was fond of his wife, so he give in and said, 'Well, durn it, bury me where you please. But when Gabriel's trump blows I expect my dog to rise with the rest of us, for he had as much soul as any durned Elliott or Crawford or MacAllister that ever strutted.
L.M. Montgomery
Mrs Lynde says, "Blessed are they who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed." But I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed.
L.M. Montgomery