The Secret Garden

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

But Mary was not as afraid of him as other people were and she was not a self-sacrificing person.

She is not a people-pleaser! Good for her!

I shall get well! And I shall live forever and ever and ever!”

One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever.

Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees,

flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us.

You learn things by saying them over and over and thinking about them until they stay in your mind forever

At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done—then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.

When new beautiful thoughts began to push out the old hideous ones, life began to come back to him, his blood ran healthily through his veins and strength poured into him like a flood.

Much more surprising things can happen to any one who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place. “Where you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow.”