L.M. Montgomery · 2088 pages
Rating: (93.9K votes)
“Hate is only love that has missed its way.”
“The tinkles of sleigh bells among the snowy hills came like elfin chimes through the frosty air, but their music was not sweeter than the song in Anne's heart and on her lips.”
“Chippy, pulling his hand from Rilla’s. Rilla”
“Well, one can’t get over the habit of being a little girl all at once,” said Anne gaily. “You see, I was little for fourteen years and I’ve only been grown-uppish for scarcely three. I’m sure I shall always feel like a child in the woods.”
“I don’t like places or people either that haven’t any faults. I think a truly perfect person would be very uninteresting.”
“By the brook she came suddenly upon Rosemary West, who was sitting on the old pine tree. She was on her way home from Ingleside, where she had been giving the girls their music lesson. She had been lingering in Rainbow Valley quite a little time, looking across its white beauty and roaming some by-ways of dream. Judging from the expression of her face, her thoughts were pleasant ones. Perhaps the faint, occasional tinkle from the bells on the Tree Lovers brought the little lurking smile to her lips. Or perhaps it was occasioned by the consciousness that John Meredith seldom failed to spend Monday evening in the gray house on the white wind-swept hill.”
“Miss Eliza was one of those people who give you the impression that life is indeed a vale of tears, and that a smile, never to speak of a laugh, is a waste of nervous energy truly reprehensible. The Andrew girls had been "girls" for fifty odd years and seemed likely to remain girls to the end of their earthly pilgrimage. Catherine, it was said, had not entirely given up hope, but Eliza, who was born a pessimist, had never had any.”
“everything is foreordained and it was bound to happen anyway. But even so, it’s nice to think one was an instrument used by predestination.”
“Yet he was a rather nice-looking young man, with crinkly russet eyes and crinkly red-brown hair, not to mention a chin that gave the world assurance of a chin.”
“No, darling. We’ve always known each other in Tomorrow,’ I said.”
“In two more years I’ll be really grown up. It’s a great comfort to think that I’ll be able to use big words then without being laughed at.” “Ruby”
“Gilbert darling, don’t let’s ever be afraid of things. It’s such dreadful slavery. Let’s be daring and adventurous and expectant. Let’s dance to meet life and all it can bring to us, even if it brings scads of trouble and typhoid and twins!”
“No... it’s lovely here when the dark is your friend, isn’t it? When you turn on the light, it makes the dark your enemy... and it glowers in at you resentfully.”
“Anne had never seen Mrs. Merrill before and never saw her again, but she always remembered her as a woman who had attained to the ultimate secret of life. You were never poor as long as you had something to love.”
“The joy of sincere work and worthy aspiration and congenial friendship were to be hers; nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy or her ideal world of dreams. And there was always the bend in the road! “‘God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world,’” whispered Anne softly. ”
“It was sad, tragic—and true! Heaven could not be what Ruby had been used to. There had been nothing in her gay, frivolous life, her shallow ideals and aspirations, to fit her for that great change, or make the life to come seem to her anything but alien and unreal and undesirable.”
“Sally says they’ll fight most of their time but that they’ll be happier fighting with each other than agreeing with anybody else. But I don’t think they’ll fight... much. I think it is just misunderstanding that makes most of the trouble in the world. You and I for so long, now...”
“I don’t like reading about martyrs because they always make me feel petty and ashamed... ashamed to admit I hate to get out of bed on frosty mornings and shrink from a visit to the dentist!”
“Well, I’m glad Esme and Trix are both happy. Since my own little romance is in flower I am all the more interested in other people’s. A nice interest, you know. Not curious or malicious but just glad there’s such a lot of happiness spread about.”
“Don’t give up all your romance, Anne,” he whispered shyly, “a little of it is a good thing — not too much, of course — but keep a little of it, Anne, keep a little of it.” ”
“Those who knew Anne best felt, without realizing that they felt it, that her greatest attraction was the aura of possibility surrounding her... the power of future development that was in her. She seemed to walk in an atmosphere of things about to happen. As”
“what perverted shapes thwarted love can take. Little”
“It always amazes me to look at the little, wrinkled brown seeds and think of the rainbows in 'em," said”
“I want to know... not just believe... that the world is round.”
“You’ll just pamper Anne’s vanity, Matthew, and she’s as vain as a peacock now.”
“Yet still the Piper piped and the dance of death went on.”
“The trouble with Mr. Howard is that he's a leetle TOO clever. He thinks that he's bound to live up to his cleverness, and that it's smarter to thrash out some new way of getting to heaven than to go by the old track the common, ignorant folks is travelling. But”
“now another illusion has been stripped from my eyes and I feel as if there wasn't such a thing as real true friendship in the world.”
“Ellen and Norman Douglas are warming up the old soup.” “Is”
“Grief"
Woke up early this morning and from my bed
looked far across the Strait to see
a small boat moving through the choppy water,
a single running light on. Remembered
my friend who used to shout
his dead wife’s name from hilltops
around Perugia. Who set a plate
for her at his simple table long after
she was gone. And opened the windows
so she could have fresh air. Such display
I found embarrassing. So did his other
friends. I couldn’t see it.
Not until this morning.”
“Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance — not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations.”
“The featureless trundle of my existence began to change. At the time, I didn't have the insight to wonder at the transient nature of despair, but now that I'm older I've seen how little it takes to turn a person's life around for better or worse. An event will do, or an idea. Another person. An idea of a person ”
“After living at sea for twenty years or more, the female loggerhead returns to the beach of her birth to nest. She travels hundreds of miles through the Atlantic, her three-hundred-pound, eddish-brown carapace filled with hundreds of fertile eggs.”
“Anna is something wrong " he asked his brow furrowed.
Yes I want to say. You ran a prison camp for Jews. You keep my parents locked in the ghetto. You let your wife's father be killed and would kill Jacob too if given the chance. Your wretched Gestapo came to our house and now Lukasz might have to leave us. Let me count the ways. Of course I did not dare to say any of this. "No Herr Kommandant " I replied managing to keep my voice even. "Everything is fine.”
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