"Because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worth while."

"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."

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

"I never hear about dear Mike. I wrote Ellen Greene and asked about him and she replyed and never mentioned Mike but told me all about her roomatism. As if I cared about her roomatism."

"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 and sweet.''And our own is a white violet, with purple streaks in its heart,' finished Priscilla."

"Proverbs are all very fine when there's nothing to worry you, but when you're in real trouble, they're not a bit of help."

"She suddenly found herself laughing without bitterness."

"Some people go through life trying to find out what the world holds for them only to find out too late that it's what they bring to the world that really counts."

"March came in that winter like the meekest and mildest of lambs, bringing days that were crisp and golden and tingling, each followed by a frosty pink twilight which gradually lost itself in an elfland of moonshine."

"Well, one can't get over the habit of being a liitle girl all at once."

"There was no mistaking her sincerity--it breathed in every tone of her voice. Both Marilla and Mrs. Lynde recognized its unmistakable ring. But the former understood in dismay that Anne was actually enjoying her valley of humiliation--was reveling in the thoroughness of her abasement. Where was the wholesome punishment upon which she, Marilla, had plumed herself? Anne had turned it into a species of positive pleasure."

"I was very much provoked. Of course, I knew there are no fairies; but that needn't prevent my thinking there is."

"And yet... you wouldn't want it to stop hurting... you wouldn't want to forget your little mother even if you could."

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

"Oh, it's delightful to have ambitions. I'm so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them-- that's the best of it. Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting."

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

"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, no matter what fairer lands may lie under alien stars."

"I love them, they are so nice and selfish. Dogs are TOO good and unselfish. They make me feel uncomfortable. But cats are gloriously human."

"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."

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

"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?"

"Of course it's better to be good. I know it ism but it's sometimes so hard to believe a thing even when you know it."

"Oh, I know I'm a great trial to you, Marilla," said Anne repentantly. "I make so many mistakes. But then just think of all the mistakes I don't make, although I might."

"Fear is the original sin, suddenly said a still, small voice away back-back-back of Valancy's consciousness. "Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something.Valancy stood up. She was still in the clutches of fear, but her soul was her own again. She would not be false to that inner voice."

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

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

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

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

"...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."

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

"It must be lovely to be grown up, Marilla, when just being treated as if you were is so nice...Well, anyway, when I grow up, I'm always going to talk to little girls as if they were, too, and I'll never laugh when they use big words."

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

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

"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."

"Gilbert put his arm about them. 'Oh, you mothers!' he said. 'You mothers! God knew what He was about when He made you."

"If it's IN you to climb you must -- there are those who MUST lift their eyes to the hills -- they can't breathe properly in the valleys."

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

"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 else."

"People who don't like cats always seem to think there is some peculiar virtue in not liking them."

"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."

"Look at that sea, girls--all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn't enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds."

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

"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."

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

"Ithink we all experience the same thing. We resent thethought that anything can please us when someone we loveis no longer here to share the pleasure with us, and we almostfeel as if we were unfaithful to our sorrow when wefind our interest in life returning to us."

"I went up on the hill and walked about until twilight had deepened into an autumn night with a benediction of starry quietude over it. I was alone but not lonely. I was a queen in halls of fancy."

"Mrs. Allan's face was not the face of the girlbride whom the minister had brought to Avonlea five years before. It had lost some of its bloom and youthful curves, and there were fine, patient lines about eyes and mouth. A tiny grave in that very cemetery accounted for some of them; and some new ones had come during the recent illness, now happily over, of her little son. But Mrs. Allan's dimples were as sweet and sudden as ever, her eyes as clear and bright and true; and what her face lacked of girlish beauty was now more than atoned for in added tenderness and strength."

"Mrs Lynde says, "Blessed are they who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed." But I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed."

"Changes ain't totally pleasant but they're excellent things... Two years is about long enough for things to stay exactly the same. If they stayed put any longer they might grow mossy."

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