The voices / 298 fragments

L.M. Montgomery

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

Author and source reference ↗

▷ Play this voice Search within this voice ↗Place in time ↗life love friendship justice learning knowledge time mind

Archive entries

01Undated

Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps . . . perhaps . . . love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.

L.M. Montgomery / quote

02Undated

Anne laughed."I don't want sunbursts or marble halls, I just want you.

L.M. Montgomery / quote

03Undated

And if you couldn't be loved, the next best thing was to be let alone.

L.M. Montgomery / quote

04Undated

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 / quote

05Undated

Gilbert, I'm afraid I'm scandalously in love with you.

L.M. Montgomery / quote

06Undated

You see," she concluded miserably, "when I can call like that to him across space--I belong to him. He doesn't love me--he never will--but I belong to him.

L.M. Montgomery / quote

07Undated

Why did dusk and fir-scent and the afterglow of autumnal sunsets make people say absurd things?

L.M. Montgomery / quote

08Undated

Life is worth living as long as there's a laugh in it.

L.M. Montgomery / quote

09Undated

Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?

L.M. Montgomery / quote

10Undated

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 / quote

11Undated

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 / quote

12Undated

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 / quote

13Undated

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 / quote

14Undated

Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.

L.M. Montgomery / quote

15Undated

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 / quote

16Undated

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 / quote

17Undated

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 / quote

18Undated

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 / quote

19Undated

Gossip, as usual, was one-third right and two-thirds wrong.

L.M. Montgomery / quote

20Undated

The world looks like something God had just imaged for his own pleasure, doesn't it?

L.M. Montgomery / quote

21Undated

...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 / quote

22Undated

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 / quote

23Undated

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 / quote

24Undated

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 / quote