Anne Shirley Complete 8-Book Series (Anne of Green Gables, #1-8)

by L.M. Montgomery

"It always amazes me to look at the little, wrinkled brown seeds and think of the rainbows in 'em," said Captain Jim. "When I ponder on them seeds I don't find it nowise hard to believe that we've got souls that'll live in other worlds. You couldn't hardly believe there was life in them tiny things, some no bigger than grains of dust, let alone color and scent, if you hadn't seen the miracle, could you?"

"It was God's will, Anne," said Marilla, helpless before the riddle of the universe—the WHY of undeserved pain. "And little Joy is better off."

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.

"You know you will like that lovely old place at the Glen after you have lived in it long enough to have dear memories woven about it," said Leslie. "Friends will come there, as they have come here—happiness will glorify it for you. Now, it's just a house to you—but the years will make it a home."

The Anne-who-used-to-be was waiting there for her. Deep, dear old gladnesses stirred in her heart. The gable room was putting its arms around her … enclosing her … enveloping her.

Anne had always been a bit queer that way. And there did not any longer seem to be much use in hoping she would outgrow it.

This will heal sometime … as your burned hand healed though it hurt so much at first."

"Darling, you're terribly mistaken about it all. God doesn't make bargains. He gives . . . gives without asking anything from us in return except love.

When you ask Father or me for something you want, we don't make

bargains with you … and God is ever and ever so much kinder than we are. And He knows so much better tha...

"Susan says it is God who makes everything beautiful but we can help Him out a bit, can't we, Mums?"

"Always … always, Jem. He shares that privilege with us."

She had an aunt who was a missionary and worked among the leopards in India.

"I've been hurt in all my finer feelings, Mother. And I'll never believe in anyone again!"

A manse cat should at least LOOK respectable, in my opinion, whatever he really is. But I never saw such a rakish-looking beast. And he walks along the ridgepole of the manse almost every evening at sunset, Mrs. Dr. dear, and waves his tail, and that is not becoming."

Being frightened of things is worse than the things themselves.

The wind was laughing and whistling about them like a leal, glad-hearted comrade.

It was spring, and young things MUST be glad in spring.

She's a decent body, if she is as queer as Dick's hat band."

There was a closet in the spare room and far back in the closet a gray silk dress was hanging. Una went into the closet and shut the door, went down on her knees and pressed her face against the soft silken folds. It had been her mother's wedding-dress. It was still full of a sweet, faint, haunting perfume, like lingering love. Una always felt very close to her mother there—as if she were kneeling at her feet with head in her lap. She went there once in a long while when life was TOO hard.

"'Believe' we'll win the war!" exclaimed Susan. "No, Miss Oliver, dear, I do not believe–I know. We must just trust in God and make big guns."

Besides, as Rilla had told her mother one day when she was nine years old, "It is easier to behave nicely when you have your good clothes on."

Rilla did not say or think that she had outgrown Irene. Had the thought occurred to her she would have considered it absurd when she was not yet seventeen and Irene was twenty. But it was the truth. Irene was just what she had been a year ago–just what she would always be. Rilla Blythe's nature in that year had changed and matured and deepened.

The body grows slowly and steadily, but the soul grows by leaps and bounds. It may come to its full stature in an hour. From that night Rilla Blythe's soul was the soul of a woman in its capacity for suffering, for strength, for endurance.

"No," said Rilla slowly. "I wouldn't. It's strange–isn't it?–They have been two terrible years–and yet I have a queer feeling of thankfulness for them–as if they had brought me something very precious, with all their pain. I wouldn't want to go back and be the girl I was two years ago, not even if I could. Not that I think I've made any wonderful progress–but I'm not quite the selfish, frivolous little doll I was then. I suppose I had a soul then, Miss Oliver–but I didn't know it. I know it now–and that is worth a great deal–worth all the suffering of the past two years.

At the end of two more years I might look back and be thankful for the development they had brought me, too; but I don't want it now." "We never do," said Miss Oliver. "That is why we are not left to choose our own means and measure of development, I suppose. No matter how much we value what our lessons have brought us we don't want to go on with the bitter schooling.

but night after night she lay in her bed, weeping the bitter rebellious tears of youth until at last tears were all wept out and the little patient ache that was to be in her heart until she died took their place.

For the first time since the blow had fallen Rilla felt –a different thing from tremulous hope and faith–that Walter, of the glorious gift and the splendid ideals, still lived, with just the same gift and just the same ideals. That could not be destroyed–these could suffer no eclipse. The personality that had expressed itself in that last letter, written on the eve of Courcelette, could not be snuffed out by a German bullet. It must carry on, though the earthly link with things of earth were broken.

"'I shall anchor my storm-tossed soul to the British fleet and make a batch of bran biscuits,' said Susan today to Cousin Sophia, who had come in with some weird tale of a new and all-conquering submarine, just launched by Germany.