Emily Starr Trilogy Quotes

“Note: — One can do a great deal with appropriate smiles. I must study the subject carefully. The friendly smile — the scornful smile — the detached smile — the entreating smile — the common or garden grin.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon / Emily Climbs . Emily's Quest

“My epic,” said Emily, diligently devouring plum cake, “is about a very beautiful high-born girl who was stolen away from her real parents when she was a baby and brought up in a woodcutter’s hut.” “One av the seven original plots in the world,” murmured Father Cassidy. “What?” “Nothing. Just a bad habit av thinking aloud. Go on.” “She had a lover of high degree but his family did not want him to marry her because she was only a woodcutter’s daughter—” “Another of the seven plots — excuse me.” “ — so they sent him away to the Holy Land on a crusade and word came back that he was killed and then Editha — her name was Editha — went into a convent—” Emily paused for a bite of plum cake and Father Cassidy took up the strain. “And now her lover comes back very much alive, though covered with Paynim scars, and the secret av her birth is discovered through the dying confession av the old nurse and the birthmark on her arm.” “How did you know?” gasped Emily in amazement. “Oh, I guessed it — I’m a good guesser.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon / Emily Climbs . Emily's Quest

“I climbed the hill of firs and looked down over the fields of mist and silver in the moonlight. The shadows of the ferns and sweet wild grasses along the edge of the woods were like a dance of sprites. Away beyond the harbour, below the moonlight, was a sky of purple and amber where a sunset had been.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon / Emily Climbs . Emily's Quest

“Aunt Elizabeth came in. “Emily, the rock-crystal goblet! Your Grandmother Murray’s goblet! And you have broken it!” “No, really. Aunty dear, I didn’t. Mr. Greaves — Mr. Mark Delage Greaves did it. He threw it at the stove.” “Threw it at the stove!” Aunt Elizabeth was staggered. “Why did he throw it at the stove?” “Because I wouldn’t marry him,” said Emily. “Marry him! Did you ever see him before?” “Never.” Aunt Elizabeth gathered up the fragments of the crystal goblet and went out quite speechless. There was — there must be — something wrong with a girl when a man proposed marriage to her at first meeting. And hurled heirloom goblets at inoffensive stoves.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon / Emily Climbs . Emily's Quest

“It might be a nice world if nobody ever said a disagreeable thing, but it would be a dangerous one,”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon / Emily Climbs . Emily's Quest

“Books are not written about proper children. They would be so dull nobody would read them.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon / Emily Climbs . Emily's Quest

“Mr. Carpenter says fear is a vile thing, and is at the bottom of almost every wrong and hatred of the world. “‘Cast it out, Jade,’ he says—’cast it out of your heart. Fear is a confession of weakness. What you fear is stronger than you, or you think it is, else you wouldn’t be afraid of it. Remember your Emerson—”always do what you are afraid to do.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon + Emily Climbs + Emily's Quest: Unabridged

“I’m like Kipling’s cat — I walk by my wild lone and wave my wild tail where so it pleases me.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon / Emily Climbs . Emily's Quest

“If ever I can buy that one silk dress I know what it is going to be like. Not black or brown or navy blue — sensible, serviceable colours, such as New Moon Murrays always wear — oh, dear, no! It is to be of shot silk, blue in one light, silver in others, like a twilight sky, glimpsed through a frosted windowpane — with a bit of lace-foam here and there, like those little feathers of snow clinging to my windowpane.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon / Emily Climbs . Emily's Quest

“Well, it all comes to this, there’s no use trying to live in other people’s opinions. The only thing to do is to live in your own. After all, I believe in myself.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon / Emily Climbs . Emily's Quest

“fearless. Mr. Carpenter says fear is a vile thing, and is at the bottom of almost every wrong and hatred of the world.
“‘Cast it out, Jade,’ he says—’cast it out of your heart. Fear is a confession of weakness. What you fear is stronger than you, or you think it is, else you wouldn’t be afraid of it. Remember your Emerson—”always do what you are afraid to do.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon / Emily Climbs . Emily's Quest

“She felt as if love was all about her and around her, breathed out from some great, invisible, hovering Tenderness.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon + Emily Climbs + Emily's Quest

“Mr. Carpenter says fear is a vile thing, and is at the bottom of almost every wrong and hatred of the world. “‘Cast it out, Jade,’ he says—’cast it out of your heart. Fear is a confession of weakness. What you fear is stronger than you, or you think it is, else you wouldn’t be afraid of it. Remember your Emerson—”always do what”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon + Emily Climbs + Emily's Quest: Unabridged

“He never bothered any one to learn dates — but the dates stuck in the memory just the same. If, as Mary Queen of Scots, you were beheaded by the school axe, kneeling blindfolded at the doorstep, with Perry Miller, wearing a mask made out of a piece of Aunt Laura’s old black silk, for executioner, wondering what would happen if he brought the axe down too hard, you did not forget the year it happened; and if you fought the battle of Waterloo all over the school playground, and heard Teddy Kent shouting, “Up, Guards and at ‘em!” as he led the last furious charge you remembered 1815 without half trying to.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon + Emily Climbs + Emily's Quest: Unabridged

“(“I don’t want them cured!” Emily was getting angrier and angrier all the time under the table. “I like my faults better than I do your — your—” she fumbled mentally for a word — then triumphantly recalled a phrase of her father’s—”your abominable virtues!”)”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon + Emily Climbs + Emily's Quest: Unabridged

“But there is strength in numbers and at noon hour Emily found herself standing alone on the playground facing a crowd of unfriendly faces. Children can be the most cruel creatures alive. They have the herd instinct of prejudice against any outsider, and they are merciless in its indulgence”
― L.M. Montgomery, Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon + Emily Climbs + Emily's Quest

“You see, it's this way. It is inme. I can't help it. And Father said I was always to keep on writing. He said I would be famous some day. Wouldn't you like to have a famous niece, Aunt Elizabeth?" "I am not going to argue the matter," said Aunt Elizabeth. "I'm not arguing—only explaining." Emily was exasperatingly respectful. "I just want you to understand how it is that I have to go on writing stories, even though I am so very sorry you don't approve." "If you don't give up this—this worse than nonsense, Emily, I'll—I'll—" Aunt Elizabeth stopped, not knowing what to say she would do. Emily was”
― L.M. Montgomery, Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon + Emily Climbs + Emily's Quest

“One couldn't be afraid or bitter where love was—and love was everywhere.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon + Emily Climbs + Emily's Quest

“You’ll get so tired of Blair Water — you’ll know all the people in it — what they are and can be — it’ll be like reading a book for the twentieth time.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon / Emily Climbs . Emily's Quest

“And then the petty jealousy of these small prunes-and-prisms places — if you do anything the people you went to school with can’t do some of them will never forgive you.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Complete Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon / Emily Climbs . Emily's Quest