Emily Climbs

My pen shall heal, not hurt.

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 your own. After all, I believe in myself. I'm not so bad and silly as they think me, and I'm not consumptive, and I can write. Now that I've written it all out I feel differently about it. The only thing that still aggravates me is that Miss Potter pitied me -- pitied by a Potter!

As she walked along she dramatized the night. There was about it a wild, lawless charm that appealed to a certain wild, lawless strain hidden deep in Emily’s nature—the strain of the gypsy and the poet, the genius and the fool.

I've a pocket full of dreams to sell," said Teddy, whimsically,... "What d'ye lack? What d'ye lack? A dream of success--a dream of adventure--a dream of the sea--a dream of the woodland--any kind of a dream you want at reasonable prices, including one or two unique little nightmares. What will you give me for a dream?

Don't try to write anything you can't feel - it will be a failure - 'echoes nothing worth

Satirize wickedness if you must--but pity weakness.

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

Houses are like people - some you like and some you don't like - and once in a while there is one you love.

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

I have made up my mind that I will never marry. I shall be wedded to my art.

I don't know which is worse - to have somebody you DON'T like ask you to marry him or NOT have some one you DO like. Both are rather unpleasant.

Nobody with any real sense of humor *can* write a love story. . . . Shakespeare is the exception that proves the rule. (90-91)

No one can be free who has a thousand ancestors.

I know you're a fool, Jim Hardy, but for heaven's sake pretend you're not for five minutes.

It was a lovely afternoon - such an afternoon as only September can produce when summer has stolen back for one more day of dream and glamour.

Fear is a vile thing, and is at the bottom of almost every wrong and hatred of the world.

The boys like me as a pal but I don't believe anyone will ever really fall in love with me." "Nonsense," said Emily reassuringly. "Nine out of ten men will fall in love with you." "But it will be the tenth I'll want," persisted Ilse gloomily.

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.

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.

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.

Lovely thoughts came flying to meet me like birds. They weren't my thoughts. I couldn't think anything half so exquisite. They came from somewhere.

Any human companionship, even the dearest and most perfect, would have been alien to her then. She was sufficient unto herself, needing not love nor comradeship nor any human emotion to round out her felicity. Such moments come rarely in any life, but when they do come they are inexpressibly wonderful - as if the finite were for a second infinity - as if humanity were for a space uplifted into divinity - as if all ugliness had vanished, leaving only flawless beauty.

A woman who has a sense of humor possesses no refuge from the merciless truth about herself. She cannot think herself misunderstood. She cannot revel in self-pity. She cannot comfortably damn any one who differs from her.

We have The Idylls of the King in English class this term. I like some things in them, but I detest Tennyson's Arthur. If I had been Guinevere I'd have boxed his ears - but I wouldn't have been unfaithful to him for Lancelot, who was just as odious in a different way. As for Geraint, if I had been Enid I'd have bitten him. These 'patient Griseldas' deserve all they get.

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

He was so lonely that he laughed at himself.

Well, one must be a slave to something in this kind of a world,' he said.

I hate to go mincing through life, afraid to take a single long step for fear somebody is watching. I want to "wave my wild tail and walk by my wild lone." There wasn't a bit of real harm in my opening that window and talking to Perry. There wasn't even any harm in his trying to kiss me. He just did it to tease me. Oh, I hate conventions. As you say, hang consequences.' 'But we can't hang 'em, Pussy - that's just the trouble. They're more likely to hang us.

Andrew is going to be one of my problems. Dean thinks it's great fun--he knows what is in the wind as well as I do. He is always teasing me about my red-headed young man--my r.h.y.m. for short. "He's almost a rhyme," said Dean. "But never a poem," said I.