I am quite likely to re-act to the opposite extreme – to feel rapturously that the world is beautiful and mere existence something to thank God for. I suppose our ‘blues’ are the price we...

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....

Don’t let a three-o’clock-at-night feeling fog your soul.

I wonder why people so commonly suppose that if two individuals are both writers they must therefore be hugely congenial,” said Anne, rather scornfully. “Nobody would expect two blacksmiths to be violently attracted toward each...

She told herself that she longed greatly to go back to those dear merry days when life was seen through a rosy mist of hope and illusion, and possessed an indefinable something that had passed...

What’s the matter with you, Penny? You’re not as good looking as you generally believe you are.

It is ever so much easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable.

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...

You have the itch for writing born in you. It’s quite incurable. What are you going to do with it?

Just as soon as I meet and learn to love a friend we must part and go our separate ways, never to meet on quite the same ground again. For, disguise the fact as we...

People who are different from other people are always called peculiar,’ said Anne.

It’s delightful when your imaginations come true, isn’t it?

We don’t know where we’re going, but isn’t is fun to go?

Most young men are such bores. They haven’t lived long enough to learn that they are not the wonders to the world they are to their mothers.

I have really done so few bad things that they have to keep harping on the old ones [.]

Folks say I’ve never been quite right since – but they only say that because I’m a poet, and because nothing ever worries me. Poets are so rare in Blair Water folks don’t understand them,...

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....

Secrets are generally terrible. Beauty is not hidden–only ugliness and deformity.

Everybody has. It wouldn’t do for us to have all our dreams fulfilled. We would be as good as dead if we had nothing left to dream about.

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

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

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,...

Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.

There’s such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I’m such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable,...

I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.

…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.

But you have such dimples,” said Anne, smiling affectionately into the pretty, vivacious face so near her own. “Lovely dimples, like little dents in cream. I have given up all hope of dimples. My dimple-dream...

Oh, as Dean says, nobody is free – never, except just for a few brief moments now and then, when the flash comes, or when as on my haystack night, the soul slips over into...

Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive–it’s such an interesting world

Look, do you see that poem?’ she said suddenly, pointing.

I never fancied cats much till I found the First Mate,” he remarked, to the accompaniment of the Mate’s tremendous purrs. “I saved his life, and when you’ve saved a creature’s life you’re bound to...

Even eighty-odd is sometimes vulnerable to vanity.

I don’t like places or people either that haven’t any faults. I think that a truly perfect person would be very uninteresting.

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

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...

Cousin Jimmy thinks I did perfectly right. Cousin Jimmy would think I had done perfectly right if I had murdered Andrew and buried him in the Land of Uprightness. It’s very nice to have one...

It takes all sorts of people to make a world, as I’ve often heard, but I think there are some who could be spared,’ Anne told her reflection in the east gable mirror that night.

Do you know what I think Mayflowers are, Marilla? I think they must be the souls of the flowers that died last summer, and this is their heaven.

Love you! Girl, you’re in the very core of my heart. I hold you there like a jewel. Didn’t I promise you I’d never tell you a lie? Love you! I love you with all...

Anne came dancing home in the purple winter twilight across the snowy places.

I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.

The ghosts of things that never happened are worse than the ghosts of things that did.

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...

I’m so glad you’re here, Anne,’ said Miss Lavendar, nibbling at her candy. ‘If you weren’t I should be blue…very blue…almost navy blue. Dreams and make-believes are all very well in the daytime and the...

Anybody is liable to rheumatism in her legs, Anne. It’s only old people who should have rheumatism in their souls, though. Thanks goodness, I never have. When you get rheumatism in your soul you might...

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...

If a kiss could be seen I think it would look like a violet,’ said Priscilla.Anne glowed.’I’m so glad you spoke that thought, Priscilla, instead of just thinking it and keeping it to yourself. This...

It’s the worst kind of cruelty — the thoughtless kind. You can’t cope with it.

An old house that had lived its life long ago and so was very quiet and wise and a little mysterious. Also a little austere, but very kind.

I read somewhere once that souls were like flowers,’ said Priscilla.’Then your soul is a golden narcissus,’ said Anne, ‘and Diana’s is like a red, red rose. Jane’s is an apple blossom, pink and wholesome...