"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 (Anne of Avonlea)

"I am simply a "book drunkard." Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them."
— L.M. Montgomery (The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery : Volume I: 1889-1910)

"True friends are always together in spirit. (Anne Shirley)"
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)

"Life is worth living as long as there's a laugh in it."
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)

"Miss Barry was a kindred spirit after all," Anne confided to Marilla, "You wouldn't think so to look at her, but she is. . . 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."
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)

"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

"It's not what the world holds for you. It's what you bring to it. "
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)

"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, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting."
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)

"I am very careful to be shallow and conventional where depth and originality are wasted."
— L.M. Montgomery

"’Oh, no. 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. Now, Fred is hopelessly good.’
‘You’ll have more sense some day, I hope,’ said Marilla."
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of the Island and Tales of Avonlea)

"Mrs. Cadbury: Tell me what you know about yourself.
Anne Shirley: Well, it really isn't worth telling, Mrs. Cadbury... but if you let me tell you what I IMAGINE about myself you'd find it a lot more interesting."
— L.M. Montgomery

"You were never poor as long as you had something to love."
— L.M. Montgomery

"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

"There might be some hours of loneliness. But there was something wonderful even in loneliness. At least you belonged to yourself when you were lonely."
— L.M. Montgomery (Mistress Pat)

"Don't you ever imagine things differently than what they are? Oh, Marilla, how much you miss."
— L.M. Montgomery

"After all, what could you expect from a pig but a grunt?"
— L.M. Montgomery

"Those who can soar to the highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths and the natures which enjoy most keenly are those which also suffer most sharply."
— L.M. Montgomery

"Without shedding of blood there is no anything… Everything, it seems to me, has to be purchased by self-sacrifice. Our race has marked every step of its painful ascent with blood. And now torrents of it must flow again… I don’t think the war has been sent as a punishment for sin. I think it is the price humanity must pay for some blessing - some advance great enough to be worth the price which we may not live to see but which our children’s children will inherit."
— L.M. Montgomery (Rilla of Ingleside)

"It was three o'clock in the morning – the wisest and most accursed hour of the clock. But sometimes it sets us free."
— L.M. Montgomery (The Blue Castle)

"Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it."
— L.M. Montgomery (The Story Girl)

"Oh, she thought, how horrible it is that people have to grow up-and marry-and change!"
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of the Island)

"Anne always remembered the silvery, peaceful beauty and fragrant calm of that night. It was the last night before sorrow touched her life; and no life is ever quite the same again when once that cold, sanctifying touch has been laid upon it."
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)

"[...] I grew up out of that strange, dreamy childhood of mine and went into the world of reality. I met with experiences that bruised my spirit - but they never harmed my ideal world. That was always mine to retreat into at will. I learned that that world and the real world clashed hopelessly and irreconcilably; and I learned to keep them apart so that the former might remain for me unspoiled. I learned to meet other people on their own ground since there seemed to be no meeting place on mine. I learned to hide the thoughts and dreams and fancies that had no place in the strife and clash of the market place. I found that it was useless to look for kindred souls in the multitude; one might stumble on such here and there, but as a rule it seemed to me that the majority of people lived for the things of time and sense alone and could not understand my other life. So I piped and danced to other people's piping - and held fast to my own soul as best I could."
— L.M. Montgomery (My Dear Mr. M: Letters to G.B. Macmillan from L.M. Montgomery)

"What is it really like to be engaged?" asked Anne curiously.

"Well, that all depends on who you're engaged to," answered Diana, with that maddening air of superior wisdom always assumed by those who are engaged over those who are not."
— L.M. Montgomery

"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. It wouldn't be half so interesting if we know all about everything, would it? There'd be no scope for imagination then, would there? But am I talking too much? People are always telling me I do. Would you rather I didn't talk? If you say so I'll stop. I can STOP when I make up my mind to it, although it's difficult."
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)

"Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight. The evening [with Ruby Gillis before her death] had changed something for her. Life held a different meaning, a deeper purpose. On the surface it would go on just the same; but the deeps had been stirred. It must not be the same with her as with poor butterfly Ruby. When she came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with the shrinking terror of something wholly different--something for which accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. 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 begin here on earth.

That goodnight [to Ruby] in the garden was for all time. Anne never saw Ruby in life again."
— L.M. Montgomery

""But it ain't our feelings we have to steer by through life--no, no, we'd make shipwreck mighty often if we did that. There's only the one safe compass and we've got to set our course by that--what it's right to do.""
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Avonlea)

"Walter's eyes were very wonderful. All the joy and sorrow and laughter and loyalty and aspirations of many generations lying under the sod looked out of their dark-gray depths."
— L.M. Montgomery (Rainbow Valley)

"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 have to pay for our temperament. 'The gods don't allow us to be in their debt.' They give us sensitiveness to beauty in all its forms but the shadow of the gift goes with it."
— L.M. Montgomery (My Dear Mr. M: Letters to G.B. Macmillan from L.M. Montgomery)

"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."
— L.M. Montgomery (Emily of New Moon)

"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

"The woods are never solitary--they are full of whispering, beckoning, friendly life. But the sea is a mighty soul, forever moaning of some great, unshareable sorrow, which shuts it up into itself for all eternity."
— L.M. Montgomery (Kilmeny of the Orchard)

"All that Ruby said was so horribly true, she was leaving everything she cared for. She had laid up her treasures on earth only. She had lived solely for the little things of life, the things that pass, forgetting the great things that go onward into eternity bridging the gulf between the two lives and making of death a mere passing of one dwelling to the other. From twilight to unclouded day. ...it was no wonder her soul clung in blind helplessness to the only things she knew and loved."
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of the Island)

"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

"'Everything, it seems to me, has to be purchased by self-sacrifice. Our race has marked every step of its painful ascent with blood. And now torrents of it must flow again. No, Mrs. Crawford, I don't think the war has been sent as a punishment for sin. I think it is the price humanity must pay for some blessing - some advance great enough to be worth the price - which we may not live to see but which our children's children will inherit."
— L.M. Montgomery (Rilla of Ingleside)

"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 (Anne of the Island)

"True friends are always together in spirit. (Anne of Green Gables)"
— L.M. Montgomery

"Tomorrow is fresh, with no mistakes in it. (Anne of Green Gables)"
— L.M. Montgomery

"Fear is the original sin, almost all 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."
— L.M. Montgomery (The Blue Castle)

"Make them do as you want them to," she said.
"I can’t," mourned Anne. "Averil is such an unmanageable heroine. She will do and say things I never meant her to. Then that spoils everything that went before and I have to write it all over again."
— L.M. Montgomery

"Youth is not a vanished thing but something that dwells forever in the heart."
— L.M. Montgomery

"It is ever so much easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable."
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)

"There was another occupant of the living-room, curled up on a couch, who must not be overlooked, since he was a creature of marked individuality, and, moreover, had the distinction of being the only living thing whom Susan really hated."
— L.M. Montgomery (Rilla of Ingleside (Anne of Green Gables, #8))

"He was a cat of double personality - or else, as Susan vowed, he was possessed by the devil."
— L.M. Montgomery (Rilla of Ingleside (Anne of Green Gables, #8))

"Rilla was fond of italics, as most girls of fifteen are."
— L.M. Montgomery (Rilla of Ingleside (Anne of Green Gables, #8))

"There was something in her movements that made you think she never walked but always danced."
— L.M. Montgomery (Rilla of Ingleside (Anne of Green Gables, #8))

"I'd like to add some beauty to life. 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 thoughts that would never have existed if I hadn't been born."
— L.M. Montgomery

"She looked like a head-on collision between a fashion plate and a nightmare."
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Avonlea)

"Marilla felt more embarrassed than ever. She had intended to teach Anne the childish classic, "Now I lay me down to sleep." But she had, as I have told you, the glimmerings of a sense of humor--which is simply another name for a sense of the fitness of things; and it suddenly occurred to her that simple little prayer, sacred to the white-robed childhood lisping at motherly knees, was entirely unsuited to this freckled witch of a girl who knew and cared nothing about God's love, since she had never had it translated to her through the medium of human love."
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)

"It does not do to laugh at the pangs of youth. They are very terrible because youth has not yet learned that 'this, too, will pass away.'"
— L.M. Montgomery (Rilla of Ingleside (Anne of Green Gables, #8))