L.M. Montgomery Quotes - Page 5

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.
L.M. Montgomery
True friends are always together in spirit. (Anne Shirley)
L.M. Montgomery
Fear is more pain than is the pain it fears
L.M. Montgomery
Fear is a vile thing, and is at the bottom of almost every wrong and hatred of the world.
L.M. Montgomery
Fear is the original sin. Almost all of the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something.It is a cold slimy serpent coiling about you. It is horrible to live with fear and it is of all things degrading.
L.M. Montgomery
Blessings be the inventor of the alphabet, pen and printing press! Life would be--to me in all events--a terrible thing without books.
L.M. Montgomery
Our library isn't very extensive," said Anne, "but every book in it is a friend. We've picked our books up through the years, here and there, never buying one until we had first read it and knew that it belonged to the race of Joseph.
L.M. Montgomery
I hate to lend a book I love…it never seems quite the same when it comes back to me…
L.M. Montgomery
I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.
L.M. Montgomery
I think it's something like Mr. Peter Sloane and the octogenarians. The other evening Mrs. Sloane was reading a newspaper ans she said to Mr. Sloane 'I see here that another octogenarian has just died. What is an Octogenarian, Peter?' And Mr. Sloane said he didn't know, but they must be very sickly creatures, for you never heard tell of them but they were dying.
L.M. Montgomery
I never hear about dear Mike. I wrote Ellen Greene and asked about him and she replyed and never mentioned Mike but told me all about her roomatism. As if I cared about her roomatism.
L.M. Montgomery
Oh, this is the most TRAGICAL thing that ever happened to me!
L.M. Montgomery
Aunt Elizabeth said, 'Do you expect to attend many balls, if I may ask?' and I said, 'Yes, when I am rich and famous.' and Aunt Elizabeth said, 'Yes, when the moon is made of green cheese.
L.M. Montgomery
I think it's something like Mr. Peter Sloane and the octogenarians. The other evening Mrs. Sloane was reading a newspaper ans she said to Mr. Sloane 'I see here that another octogenarian has just died. What is an Octogenarian, Peter?' And Mr. Sloane said he didn't know, but they must be very sickly creatures, for you never heard tell of them but they were dying.
L.M. Montgomery
I never hear about dear Mike. I wrote Ellen Greene and asked about him and she replyed and never mentioned Mike but told me all about her roomatism. As if I cared about her roomatism.
L.M. Montgomery
Oh, this is the most TRAGICAL thing that ever happened to me!
L.M. Montgomery
Aunt Elizabeth said, 'Do you expect to attend many balls, if I may ask?' and I said, 'Yes, when I am rich and famous.' and Aunt Elizabeth said, 'Yes, when the moon is made of green cheese.
L.M. Montgomery
That's one of the things we learn as we grow older -- how to forgive. It comes easier at forty than it did at twenty.
L.M. Montgomery
When I left Queen's my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around the bend, but I am going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own, that bend, Marilla. I wonder how the road beyond it goes - what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows - what new landscapes - what new beauties - what curves and hills and valleys farther on.
L.M. Montgomery
Then Diana puts too many murders into [her stories]. She says most of the time she doesn’t know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get rid of them.
L.M. Montgomery
The p'int of good writing is to know when to stop.
L.M. Montgomery
It was not, of course, a proper thing to do. But then I have never pretended, nor will ever pretend, that Emily was a proper child. Books are not written about proper children. They would be so dull nobody would read them.
L.M. Montgomery
Don't try to write anything you can't feel - it will be a failure - 'echoes nothing worth
L.M. Montgomery
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.
L.M. Montgomery
You have the itch for writing born in you. It's quite incurable. What are you going to do with it?
L.M. Montgomery
My pen shall heal, not hurt.
L.M. Montgomery
Fancies are like shadows...you can't cage them, they're such wayward, dancing things.
L.M. Montgomery
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 them off to get rid of them." -Anne Shirley
L.M. Montgomery
There is such a place as fairyland - but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they have grown so old that they forget the way. One bitter day, when they seek it and cannot find it, they realize what they have lost; and that is the tragedy of life. On that day the gates of Eden are shut behind them and the age of gold is over. Henceforth they must dwell in the common light of common day. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again; and blessed are they above mortals. They, and only they, can bring us tidings from that dear country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles. The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland.
L.M. Montgomery
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.
L.M. Montgomery
I suppose that's how it looks in prose. But it's very different if you look at it through poetry…and I think it's nicer…' Anne recovered herself and her eyes shone and her cheeks flushed… 'to look at it through poetry.
L.M. Montgomery
Don't you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back?
L.M. Montgomery
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.
L.M. Montgomery
Despair is a free man—hope isa slave.
L.M. Montgomery
My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.
L.M. Montgomery
Nobody with any real sense of humor *can* write a love story. . . . Shakespeare is the exception that proves the rule. (90-91)
L.M. Montgomery
Anne, look here. Can’t we be good friends?”For a moment Anne hesitated. She had an odd, newly awakened consciousness under all her outraged dignity that the half-shy, half-eager expression in Gilbert’s hazel eyes was something that was very good to see. Her heart gave a quick, queer little beat. But the bitterness of her old grievance promptly stiffened up her wavering determination. That scene of two years before flashed back into her recollection as vividly as if it had taken place yesterday. Gilbert had called her “carrots” and had brought about her disdain before the whole school. Her resentment, which to other and older people might be as laughable as its cause, was in no whit allayed and softened by time seemingly. She hated Gilbert Blythe! She would never forgive him!
L.M. Montgomery
But I'll have to ask you to wait a long time, Anne," said Gilbert sadly. "It will be three years before I'll finish my medical course. And even then there will be no diamond sunbursts and marble halls."Anne laughed."I don't want sunbursts and marble halls. I just want YOU. You see I'm quite as shameless as Phil about it. Sunbursts and marble halls may be all very well, but there is more `scope for imagination' without them. And as for the waiting, that doesn't matter. We'll just be happy, waiting and working for each other -- and dreaming. Oh, dreams will be very sweet now."Gilbert drew her close to him and kissed her. Then they walked home together in the dusk, crowned king and queen in the bridal realm of love, along winding paths fringed with the sweetest flowers that ever bloomed, and over haunted meadows where winds of hope and memory blew.
L.M. Montgomery
We mustn't let next week rob us of this week's joy.
L.M. Montgomery
Well, I don't want to be anyone but myself, even if I go uncomforted by diamonds all my life,' declared Anne. 'I'm quite content to be Anne of Green Gables, with my string of pearl beads.
L.M. Montgomery
The gods, so says the old superstition, do not like to behold too happy mortals. It is certain, at least, that some human beings do not.
L.M. Montgomery
Oh, Marilla, I thought I was happy before. Now I know that I just dreamed a pleasant dream of happiness. This is the reality.
L.M. Montgomery
But pearls are for tears, the old legend says," Gilbert had objected."I'm not afraid of that. And tears can be happy as well as sad. My very happiest moments have been when I had tears in my eyes—when Marilla told me I might stay at Green Gables—when Matthew gave me the first pretty dress I ever had—when I heard that you were going to recover from the fever. So give me pearls for our troth ring, Gilbert, and I'll willingly accept the sorrow of life with its joy." -Anne
L.M. Montgomery
It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.
L.M. Montgomery
When you've learned to laugh at the things that should be laughed at, and not to laugh at those that shouldn't, you've got wisdom and understanding.
L.M. Montgomery
The world looks like something God had just imaged for his own pleasure, doesn't it?
L.M. Montgomery
...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.
L.M. Montgomery
Gossip, as usual, was one-third right and two-thirds wrong.
L.M. Montgomery
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 whenyou are in the depths of despair?"I've never been in the depths of despair, so I can't say," responded Marilla. Weren't you? Well, did you ever try to IMAGINE you were inthe depths of despair?"No, I didn't."Then I don't think you can understand what it's like. It's very uncomfortable a feeling indeed.
L.M. Montgomery
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.
L.M. Montgomery
When I left Queen's my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe that the best does.
L.M. Montgomery
I've done my best, and I begin to understand what is meant by 'the joy of strife'. Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.
L.M. Montgomery
Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.
L.M. Montgomery
I don't know, I don't want to talk as much. (...) It's nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one's heart, like treasures. I don't like to have them laughed at or wondered over.
L.M. Montgomery
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.
L.M. Montgomery
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.
L.M. Montgomery
Well, we all make mistakes, dear, so just put it behind you. We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.
L.M. Montgomery
Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?
L.M. Montgomery
Life is worth living as long as there's a laugh in it.
L.M. Montgomery
Why did dusk and fir-scent and the afterglow of autumnal sunsets make people say absurd things?
L.M. Montgomery