L.M. Montgomery Quotes & Sayings

Satirize wickedness if you must
but pity weakness. — L.M. Montgomery

In geometry Anne met her Waterloo. "It's perfectly awful stuff, Marilla," she groaned. "I'm sure I'll never be able to make heads or tail of it. There is not scope for imagination in it at all. — L.M. Montgomery

Once in a thousand years, you know, one cat is allowed to speak. My cats are philosophers-neither of them ever cries over spilt milk. — L.M. Montgomery

Nothing to hinder me. But that brief dream is over. I am resigned to my fate now, so I don't think I'll go out for fear I'll get unresigned again. — L.M. Montgomery

At life's banquet of success I may not be the guest of honor, but I'll be among those present. — L.M. Montgomery

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. — L.M. Montgomery

You will go far beyond what I have done - you can create - I can only build with the materials others have made. But we builders have our place - we can make temples for our gods and goddesses if nothing else. — L.M. Montgomery

She dropped miserably on the first chair she came to and sat there staring through the oriel, oblivious of Good Luck's frantic purrs of joy and Banjo's savage glares of protest at her occupancy of his chair. — L.M. Montgomery

Oh, it was almost too much to bear! And everything was going on as before - the dancers were spinning around, the boys who couldn't get partners were hanging about the pavilion, canoodling couples were sitting out on the rocks - nobody seemed to realize what a stupendous thing had happened. — L.M. Montgomery

Oh, we're very careful, Marilla. And it's so interesting. Two flashes means, "Are you there?" Three means "yes" and four "no." Five means, "Come over as soon as possible, because I have something important to reveal." Diana has just signalled five flashes, and I'm really suffering to know what it is. — L.M. Montgomery

One could have eaten a meal off the ground without overbrimming the proverbial peck of dirt. Mrs. — L.M. Montgomery

What is the matter with Harrison Miller, anyway? — L.M. Montgomery

Valancy herself had never quite relinquished a certain pitiful, shamed, little hope that Romance would come her way yet - never, until this wet, horrible morning, when she wakened to the fact that she was twenty-nine and unsought by any man. Ay, there lay the sting. Valancy did not mind so much being an old maid. After all, she thought, being an old maid couldn't possibly be as dreadful as being married to an Uncle Wellignton or an Uncle Benjamin, or even an Uncle Herbert. What hurt her was that she had never had a chance to be anything but an old maid. — L.M. Montgomery

One June evening, when the orchards were pink-blossomed again, when the frogs were singing silverly sweet in the marshes about the head of the Lake of Shining Waters, and the air was full of the savor of clover fields and balsamic fir woods, Anne was sitting by her gable window. She had been studying her lessons, but it had grown too dark to see the book, so she had fallen into wide-eyed reverie, looking out past the boughs of the Snow Queen, once more bestarred with its tufts of blossom. — L.M. Montgomery

Why, for mercy's sake, did boys try to dance who didn't know the first thing about dancing; and who had feet as big as boats? — L.M. Montgomery

Anne, are you killed?' shrieked Diana, throwing herself on her knees beside her friend. 'Oh, Anne, dear Anne, speak just one word to me and tell me if you're killed. — L.M. Montgomery

It does people good to have to do things they don't like ... in moderation. — L.M. Montgomery

Charlotte had never forgotten it - she was always looking for it. An old house facing seaward, ships going up and down. Spruce woods and musty hills, cold salt air from the water, rest, quiet, silence. — L.M. Montgomery

Of unquenchable sparkle and dream as ever. Behind her, in the hammock, Rilla Blythe was curled up, a fat, roly-poly little creature of — L.M. Montgomery

Pointed firs coming out against the pink sky- and that white orchard and the old Snow Queen. Isn't the breath of the mint delicious? And that tea rose- why, it's a song and a hope and a prayer all in one. — L.M. Montgomery

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

I was very sorry that i had been in a temper --- but I was sorry because it was foolish and undignified, not because it was wicked. — L.M. Montgomery

After all, it was nice to be loved than to be rich and admired and famous. — L.M. Montgomery

Well, I won't. Ludovic Speed and Theodora Dix live in Middle Grafton and Mrs. Rachel says he has been courting her for a hundred years. Won't they soon be too old to get married, Anne? I hope Gilbert won't court YOU that long. When are you going to be married, Anne? Mrs. Lynde says it's a sure thing." "Mrs. Lynde is a - " began Anne hotly; then stopped. "Awful old gossip," completed Davy calmly. "That's what every one calls her. But is it a sure thing, Anne? I want to know." "You're — L.M. Montgomery

Folks say I'm good," he remarked whimsically upon one occasion, "but I sometimes wish the Lord had made me only half as good and put the rest of it into looks. But there, I reckon He knew what He was about, as a good Captain should. Some of us have to be homely, or the purty ones - like Mistress Blythe here - wouldn't show up so well. — L.M. Montgomery

I said I thought I liked Dean's idea of a succession of lives - I can't make out from him whether he really believes that or not - and Ilse said that might be all very well if you were sure of being born again as a decent person, but how about it if you weren't? — L.M. Montgomery

Marilla loved the [more grown up] girl as much as she had loved the child, but she was conscious of a queer sorrowful sense of loss. — L.M. Montgomery

She said she'd have spoken years ago, only she thought I wouldn't. And I never spoke to her because I was sure she wouldn't speak to me. Isn't it strange how people misunderstand each other? — L.M. Montgomery

But it's a million times nicer to be Anne of Green Gables than Anne of nowhere in particular, isn't it? — L.M. Montgomery

A broken heart in real life isn't half as dreadful as it is in books. It's a good deal like a bad tooth, though you won't think THAT a very romantic simile. It takes spells of aching and gives you a sleepless night now and then, but between times it lets you enjoy life and dreams and echoes and peanut candy as if there were nothing the matter with it. — L.M. Montgomery

I don't want to talk as much,' she said, denting her chin thoughtfully with her forefinger. 'It's nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one's heart, like treasures. — L.M. Montgomery

There is nothing more aggravating than a man who won't talk back - unless it is a woman who won't. — L.M. Montgomery

And yet... you wouldn't want it to stop hurting... you wouldn't want to forget your little mother even if you could. — L.M. Montgomery

[Ilse] was suffering so keenly that she wanted to arraign the universe at the bar of her pain. — L.M. Montgomery

When a man don't know his own mind, Miss Shirley, ma'am, how's a poor woman going to be sure of it? — L.M. Montgomery

I know they'll take their knitting with them everywhere. They simply couldn't be parted from it. They will walk about Westminster Abbey and knit, I feel sure. — L.M. Montgomery

I told you the Bible was more to be depended on than newspapers! — 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

Keep that red-haired girl of yours in the open air all summer and don't let her read books until she gets more spring into her step." This message frightened Marilla wholesomely. She read Anne's death warrant by consumption in it unless it was scrupulously obeyed. As a result, Anne had the golden summer of her life as far as freedom and frolic went. She walked, rowed, berried, and dreamed to her heart's content; and when September came she was bright-eyed and alert, with a step that would have satisfied the Spencervale doctor and a heart full of ambition and zest once more. "I just feel like studying with might and main," she declared as she brought her books down from the attic. "Oh, you good old friends, I'm glad to see your honest face once more - yes, even you, geometry. — L.M. Montgomery

Because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worth while. — L.M. Montgomery

Is there laughter in your face yet, Rilla? I hope so. The world will need laughter and courage more than ever in the years that will come next. I don't want to preach - this isn't any time for it. — L.M. Montgomery

It is twenty-four years since I was a bride at old Green Gables - the happiest bride that ever was - and the wedding-veil of a happy bride brings good luck, — L.M. Montgomery

[ ... ] I grew up out of that strange, dreamy childhood of mine and went into the world of reality. I met with experiences that bruised my spirit - but they never harmed my ideal world. That was always mine to retreat into at will. I learned that that world and the real world clashed hopelessly and irreconcilably; and I learned to keep them apart so that the former might remain for me unspoiled. I learned to meet other people on their own ground since there seemed to be no meeting place on mine. I learned to hide the thoughts and dreams and fancies that had no place in the strife and clash of the market place. I found that it was useless to look for kindred souls in the multitude; one might stumble on such here and there, but as a rule it seemed to me that the majority of people lived for the things of time and sense alone and could not understand my other life. So I piped and danced to other people's piping - and held fast to my own soul as best I could. — 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

The lines and verses are only the outward garments of the poem and are no more really it than your ruffles and flounces are YOU, — L.M. Montgomery

God's in His heaven, alls right with the world', whispered Anne softly. — L.M. Montgomery

Don't let them make anything of you but yourself, that's all. — L.M. Montgomery

I do not know the difference between them, for the politics of the Yankees is a puzzle I cannot solve, study it as I may. But as far as seeing through a grindstone goes, I am afraid - " Susan shook her head dubiously, "that they are all tarred with the same brush. — L.M. Montgomery

Babies are such fascinating creatures," said Anne dreamily. "They are what I heard somebody at Redmond call 'terrific bundles of potentialities.' Think of it, Katherine ... Homer must have been a baby once ... a baby with dimples and great eyes full of light ... he couldn't have been blind then, of course. — L.M. Montgomery

He had learned the rare secret that you must take happiness when you find it - that there is no use in marking the place and coming back to it at a more convenient season, because it will not be there then. — L.M. Montgomery

Matthew had sheepishly unfolded the dress from its paper swathings and held it out with a deprecatory glance at Marilla, who feigned to be contemptuously filling the teapot, but nevertheless watched the scene out of the corner of her eye with a rather interested air.
Anne took the dress and looked at it in reverent silence. Oh, how pretty it was
a lovely soft brown gloria with all the gloss of silk; a skirt with dainty frills and shirrings; a waist elaborately pintucked in the most fashinable way, with a little ruffle of filmy lace at the neck. But the sleeves
they were the crowning glory! Long elbow cuffs, and above them two beautiful puffs divided by rows of shirring and bows of brown-silk ribbon. — L.M. Montgomery

The day never goes by for men and nations to make asses of themselves and take to the fists. — L.M. Montgomery

She isn't like any of the girls I ever knew, or any of the girls I was myself."
"How many girls were you, Aunt Jimsie?"
"About half a dozen, my dear. — L.M. Montgomery

We both belong to the race that knows Joseph, as Cornelia Bryant would say." "The race that knows Joseph?" puzzled Anne. "Yes. Cornelia divides all the folks in the world into two kinds - the race that knows Joseph and the race that don't. If a person sorter sees eye to eye with you, and has pretty much the same ideas about things, and the same taste in jokes - why, then he belongs to the race that knows Joseph." "Oh, I understand," exclaimed Anne, light breaking in upon her. "It's what I used to call - and still call in quotation marks 'kindred spirits. — L.M. Montgomery

I like babies in moderation, but twins three times in succession is TOO MUCH. I told Mrs. Hammond so firmly, when the last pair came. — L.M. Montgomery

And anyhow I'd always be too tired at night to bother saying prayers. People who have to look after twins can't be expected to say their prayers. Now, — L.M. Montgomery

Gilbert stretched himself out on the ferns beside the Bubble and looked
approvingly at Anne. If Gilbert had been asked to describe his ideal
woman the description would have answered point for point to Anne, even
to those seven tiny freckles whose obnoxious presence still continued to
vex her soul. Gilbert was as yet little more than a boy; but a boy has
his dreams as have others, and in Gilbert's future there was always a
girl with big, limpid gray eyes, and a face as fine and delicate as a
flower. — L.M. Montgomery

Fairyland is the loveliest word because it means everything the human heart desires. — L.M. Montgomery

Anne Shirley, how often have I told you never to let one of those Italians in the house! I don't believe in encouraging them to come around at all. — L.M. Montgomery

We are never half so interesting when we have learned that language is given us to enable us to conceal our thoughts. — L.M. Montgomery

There is no such thing as freedom on earth," he said. "Only different kinds of bondages. And comparative bondages. YOU think you are free now because you've escaped from a peculiarly unbreakable kind of bondage. But are you? You love me - THAT'S a bondage. — L.M. Montgomery

When one great passion seizes possession of the soul all other feelings are crowded out. — L.M. Montgomery

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

It is not vanity to know your own good points. It would just be stupidity if you didn't — L.M. Montgomery

Have you ever noticed how many different silences there are, Gilbert? The silence of the woods ... of the shore ... of the meadows ... of the night ... of the summer afternoon. All different because all the undertones that thread them are different. I'm sure if I were totally blind and insensitive to heat and cold I could easily tell just where I was by the quality of the silence about me. — L.M. Montgomery

In everything you do aim to excel for what is worth doing is worth doing well — L.M. Montgomery

It might be a nice world if nobody ever said a disagreeable thing, but it would be a dangerous one, — L.M. Montgomery

What a spineless thing I must be not to have one enemy! — 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

I came to the conclusion, Marilla, that I wasnt born for city life and that I was glad of it. It's nice to be eating ice-cream at brilliant restaurants at eleven o'clock at night once in a while; but as a regular thing I'd rather be in east gable at eleven, sound asleep, but kind of knowing even in my sleep that the stars were shining outside and the wind was blowing the firs across the brook. — L.M. Montgomery

It must be lovely to be grown up, Marilla, when just being treated as if you were is so nice ... Well, anyway, when I grow up, I'm always going to talk to little girls as if they were, too, and I'll never laugh when they use big words. — L.M. Montgomery

Mrs. Binnie says we throw out more with a spoon than the men can be bringing in with a shovel ... Binnie-like. Our men like the good living. And what if we don't be having too much money, Patsy dear? Sure and we do have lashings of things no money could be buying. There'll be enough squeezed out for Cuddles when the time comes. The Good Man Above will be seeing to that. — L.M. Montgomery

What is to be, will be," said Mrs. Rachel gloomily, "and what isn't to be happens sometimes. — L.M. Montgomery

Anne had no sooner uttered the phrase, "home o'dreams," than it captivated her fancy and she immediately began the erection of one of her own. It was, of course, tenanted by an ideal master, dark, proud, and melancholy; but oddly enough, Gilbert Blythe persisted in hanging about too, helping her arrange pictures, lay out gardens, and accomplish sundry other tasks which a proud and melancholy hero evidently considered beneath his dignity. Anne tried to banish Gilbert's image from her castle in Spain but, somehow, he went on being there, so Anne, being in a hurry, gave up the attempt and pursued her aerial architecture with such success that her "home o'dreams" was built and furnished before Diana spoke again. — L.M. Montgomery

Fear is the original sin," suddenly said a still, small voice away back - back - back of Valancy's consciousness. "Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something."
Valancy stood up. She was still in the clutches of fear, but her soul was her own again. She would not be false to that inner voice. — L.M. Montgomery

The body grows slowly and steadily but the soul grows by leaps and bounds. It may come to its full stature in an hour. — L.M. Montgomery

I'm in the depths of despair! (Anne of Green Gables) — L.M. Montgomery

Nothing worth while is every easy come by. — L.M. Montgomery

How horrible it is that people have to grow up! — L.M. Montgomery

Another story was that a certain dissipated youth of the community, going home one Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, from some unhallowed orgy, was pursued by a lamb of fire, with its head cut off and hanging by a strip of skin or flame. — L.M. Montgomery

Oh, I don't wonder babies always cry when they wake up in the night. So often I want to do it too. — L.M. Montgomery

... I'm afraid Katherine likes me so much now that she can't always like me as much ... — L.M. Montgomery

There the rose of joy bloomed immortal by dale and stream; clouds never darkened the sunny sky; sweet bells never jangled out of tune; and kindred spirits abounded. — L.M. Montgomery

Don't let a three-o'clock-at-night feeling fog your soul. — L.M. Montgomery

Kingsport or feel at home there. Before — L.M. Montgomery

To be obliged to sit still when mental agony urges us to stride up and down is the refinement of torture. Every — L.M. Montgomery

No one can be free who has a thousand ancestors. — 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

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

I like a man whose eyes say more than his lips, thought Valancy. — L.M. Montgomery

Mrs. Marshall Elliott, — L.M. Montgomery

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. — L.M. Montgomery

you didn't to-night. — L.M. Montgomery

She makes me love her and I like people who make me love them. It saves me so much trouble making myself love them — L.M. Montgomery

Anne, on her way to Orchard Slope, met Diana, bound for Green Gables, just where the mossy old log bridge spanned the brook below the Haunted Wood, and they sat down by the margin of the Dryad's Bubble, where tiny ferns were unrolling like curly-headed green pixy folk wakening up from a nap. — L.M. Montgomery

Rilla's heart skipped a beat - or, if that be a pysiological impossibility, she thought it did. — L.M. Montgomery

Well, hope for your thrilling career - but remember that if there is to be drama in your life somebody must pay the piper in the coin of suffering. If not you - then someone else. — L.M. Montgomery

Gilbert would never have dreamed of writing a sonnet to her eyebrows. But then, Gilbert could see a joke. She had once told Roy a funny story - and he had not seen the point of it. She recalled the chummy laugh she and Gilbert had had together over it, and wondered uneasily if life with a man who had no sense of humor might not be somewhat uninteresting in the long run. But who could expect a melancholy, inscrutable hero to see the humorous side of things? It would be flatly unreasonable. — L.M. Montgomery

Here sat Marilla Cuthbert, when she sat at all, slightly distrustful of sunshine, which seemed to her too dancing and irresponsible a thing for a world which was meant to be taken seriously ... — L.M. Montgomery

I can't feel exactly happy ... Nobody could that has red hair — L.M. Montgomery