L.M. Montgomery Quotes

Biography

Type: Fiction writer

Born: November 30, 1874

Died: April 24, 1942 (aged 67)

Lucy Maud Montgomery publicly known as L. M. Montgomery, was a Canadian author best known for a series of novels beginning in 1908 with "Anne of Green Gables".

L.M. Montgomery Quotes

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

My pen shall heal, not hurt.

Tell me this-if you knew you would be poor as a church mouse all your life-if you knew you'd never have a line published-would you still go on writing-would you?'
'Of course I would,' said Emily disdainfully. 'Why, I have to write-I can't help it at times-I've just got to.

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

Fancies are like shadows...you can't cage them, they're such wayward, dancing things.

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

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.

The p'int of good writing is to know when to stop.

Then Diana puts too many murders into [her stories]. She says most of the time she doesn’t know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get rid of them.

Jane says she will devote her whole life to teaching, and never, never marry, because you are paid a salary for teaching, but a husband won't pay you anything, and growls if you ask for a share in the egg and butter money.

Words aren't made - they grow,' said Anne.

But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?

Don't be ridiculous, please.'
The most insulting words in the world!

But I believe I rather like superstitious people. They lend color to life. Wouldn't it be a rather drab world if everybody was wise and sensible . . . and good? What would we find to talk about?

Anne laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.

Anne was always glad in the happiness of her friends; but it is sometimes a little lonely to be surrounded everywhere by happiness that is not your own.

Oh, Marilla, I thought I was happy before. Now I know that I just dreamed a pleasant dream of happiness. This is the reality.

The gods, so says the old superstition, do not like to behold too happy mortals. It is certain, at least, that some human beings do not.

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.

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

...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.

My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.

Despair is a free man-hope is
a slave.

Aunt Elizabeth said, 'Do you expect to attend many balls, if I may ask?' and I
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.

Oh, this is the most TRAGICAL thing that ever happened to me!

Don't you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back?

I suppose that's how it looks in prose. But it's very different if you look at it through poetry…and I think it's nicer…' Anne recovered herself and her eyes shone and her cheeks flushed… 'to look at it through poetry.

Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I'd do. I'd go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I'd look up into the sky - up - up - up - into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I'd just feel a prayer.

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.

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.

I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.

I hate to lend a book I love…it never seems quite the same when it comes back to me…

Our library isn't very extensive," said Anne, "but every book in it is a friend. We've picked our books up through the years, here and there, never buying one until we had first read it and knew that it belonged to the race of Joseph.

After all, what could you expect from a pig but a grunt?

A woman cannot ever be sure of not being married till she is buried, Mrs. Doctor, dear, and meanwhile I will make a batch of cherry pies.

Fear is the original sin. Almost all of the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something.It is a cold slimy serpent coiling about you. It is horrible to live with fear; and it is of all things degrading.

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

Which would you rather be if you had the choice-divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?

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

If you've brains it's better than beauty - brains last, beauty doesn't.

...And every day in heaven will be more beautiful than the one before it Davy," assured Anne.

How terrible it must be not to see and feel beauty.... I'm so glad I can find happiness in all lovely little things... It seems to me that every time I look out of a window the world gives me a gift.

I never knew before that religion was such a cheerful thing. I always thought it was kind of melancholy, but Mrs. Allan's isn't, and I'd like to be a Christian if I could be one like her.

I couldn't sew on a day like this. There's something in the air that gets in the blood and makes a sort of glory in my soul. My fingers would twitch and I'd sew a crooked seam. So it's ho for the park and the pines.

I'm sure I shall always feel like a child in the wood.

When I think something nice is going to happen I seem to fly right up on the wings of anticipation; and then the first thing I realize I drop down to earth with a thud. But really, Marilla, the flying part is glorious as long as it lasts...it's like soaring through a sunset. I think it almost pays for the thud.

Is it Rilla-my-Rilla?

I wouldn't want to marry anybody who was wicked, but I think I'd like it if he could be wicked and wouldn't.

Oh, of course there's a risk in marrying anybody, but, when it's all said and done, there's many a worse thing than a husband.

Nobody can keep on being angry if she looks into the heart of a pansy for a little while.

A house from which nobody ever went away without feeling better in some way. A house in which there was always laughter.

Thank goodness, we can choose our friends. We have to take our relatives as they are, and be thankful…

You've all been so sure that life is good that I've never been able to disbelieve it. Never will be able to.

You may tire of reality but you never tire of dreams.

She had dreamed some brilliant dreams during the past winter and now they lay in the dust around her. In her present mood of self-disgust, she could not immediately begin dreaming again. And she discovered that, while solitude with dreams is glorious, solitude without them has few charms.

Even when I'm alone I have real good company - dreams and imaginations and pretendings. I like to be alone now and then, just to think over things and taste them. But I love friendships - and nice, jolly little times with people.

Listen to the trees talking in their sleep,' she whispered, as he lifted her to the ground. 'What nice dreams they must have!

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.

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.

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.

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 eternity for a little space. All the rest of our years we are slaves to something - traditions - conventions - ambitions - relations.

Oh", she thought, "how horrible it is that people have to grow up-and marry-and change!

People told her she hadn't changed much, in a tone which hinted they were surprised and a little disappointed she hadn't.

I've put out a lot of little roots these two years," Anne told the moon, "and when I'm pulled up they're going to hurt a great deal. But it's best to go, I think, and, as Marilla says, there's no good reason why I shouldn't. I must get out all my ambitions and dust them.

Changes come all the time. Just as soon as things get really nice they change,' she said with a sigh.

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

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.

Some people are naturally good, you know, and others are not. I'm one of the others.

I can't understand how she could have wanted to live back here, away from everything," said Jane. "Oh, I can easily understand that," said Anne thoughtfully. "I wouldn't want it myself for a steady thing because, although I love the fields and woods, I love people too...

Oh, sometimes I think it is of no use to make friends. They only go out of your life after awhile and leave a hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came.

When twilight drops her curtain down And pins it with a star Remember that you have a friend Though she may wander far.

…I'm so thankful for friendship. It beautifies life so much.

Kindred spirits alone do not change with the changing years.

I feel as if something has been torn suddenly out of my life and left a terrible hole. I feel as if I couldn't be I - as if I must have changed into somebody else and couldn't get used to it. It gives me a horrible lonely, dazed, helpless feeling. It's good to see you again - it seems as if you were a sort of anchor for my drifting soul.

We've had a beautiful friendship, Diana. We've never marred it by one quarrel or coolness or unkind word; and I hope it will always be so. But things can't be quite the same after this. You'll have other interests. I'll just be on the outside.

Outside in the garden, which was full of mellow sunset light streaming through the dark old firs to the west of it, stood Anne and Diana, gazing bashfully at each other over a clump of gorgeous tiger lilies.

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 friend like that, though too many wouldn't be good for you.

I'm afraid of those cows,' protested poor Dora, seeing a prospect of escape.
'The very idea of your being scared of those cows,' scoffed Davy. 'Why, they're both younger than you.

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

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 as well go and pick out your coffin.

She came out of her reverie with a deep sigh and looked at him with a dreamy gaze of a soul that had been wandering afar, star-led.

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 will never come true; but so many of my dreams have that I mustn't complain. Am I all ready now?

When I read that the flash came, and I took a sheet of paper. . .and I wrote on it: I, Emily Byrd Starr, do solemnly vow this day that I will climb the Alpine Path and write my name on the scroll of fame.

I can always get through to-day very nicely. It's to-morrow I can't live through

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

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

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