Best quotes from Anne of the Island

Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight. The evening 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 in the garden was for all time. Anne never saw Ruby in life again.

she was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen pass away, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

It will come sometime. Some beautiful morning she will just wake up and find it is Tomorrow. Not Today but Tomorrow. And then things will happen ... wonderful things.

When you've learned to laugh at the things that should be laughed at, and not to laugh at those that shouldn't, you've got wisdom and understanding.

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

I don't want sunbursts and marble halls. I just want YOU. [....] Sunbursts and marble halls may be all very well, but there is more 'scope for imagination' without them. And as for the waiting, that doesn't matter. We'll just be happy, waiting and working for each other—and dreaming. Oh, dreams will be very sweet now.

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.

Anne laughed and sighed. She felt very old and mature and wise — which showed how young she was.

All life lessons are not learned at college,' she thought. 'Life teaches them everywhere.

Oh", she thought, "how horrible it is that people have to grow up-and marry-and change!

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.

I feel as if I had opened a book and found roses of yesterday sweet and fragrant, between its leaves.

Long after Pacifiique's gay whistle had faded into the phantom of music and then into silence far up under the maples of Lover's Lane Anne stood under the willows, tasting the poignant sweetness of life when some great dread has been removed from it. The morning was a cup filled with mist and glamor. In the corner near her was a rich surprise of new-blown, crystal-dewed roses. The trills and trickles of song from the birds in the big tree above her seemed in perfect accord with her mood. A sentence from a very old, very true, very wonderful Book came to her lips, "Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning.

People told her she hadn't changed much, in a tone which hinted they were surprised and a little disappointed she hadn't.

I've loved you ever since that day you broke your slate over my head in school.

There is a book of Revelation in every one's life, as there is in the Bible.

There is so much in the world for us all if we only have the eyes to see it, and the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it to ourselves--so much in men and women, so much in art and literature, so much everywhere in which to delight, and for which to be thankful.

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.

She turned to Roy with her gayest expression. He smiled back at her with what Phil called "his deep, black, velvety smile." Yet, she really did not see Roy at all. She was acutely conscious that Gilbert was standing under the palms just across the room talking to a girl who must be Christine Stuart

Anne had wandered down the the Dryard's Bubble and was curled up among the ferns at the root of the n=big white birch where sher and Gilbert had so often sat ion summers gone by. Hew had gone into the newspaper office again when college was closed, and Avonlea seemed very dull without him. He never wrote to her, and Anne missed the letters that neer came. To be sure, Roy wrote twice a week; his letters were exquisite compositions which would have read beautifully in a memoir or biography. Anne felt herself more deeply in love with him that ever when she read the; but her heart never game that queer, quick, painful bound at sight of his letters which had given one day when Mrs. Hiram Sloane had handed her out an envelope addressed in Gilbert's black, upright handwriting. Anne had hurried home to the east gable and opened it eagrly--to find a typewritten copy of some college society report--"only that and nothing more." Anne flung the harmless screed across her room and sat down to write and especially nice epistle to Roy

Besides, I've been feeling a little blue — just a pale, elusive azure. It isn't serious enough for anything darker.

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.

…the Lake of Shining Waters was blue — blue — blue; not the changeful blue of spring, nor the pale azure of summer, but a clear, steadfast, serene blue, as if the water were past all modes and tenses of emotion and had settled down to a tranquillity unbroken by fickle dreams.

After Davy had gone to bed Anne wandered down to Victoria Island and sat there alone, curtained with fine-spun, moonlit gloom, while the water laughed around her in a duet of brook and wind.

It's bad enough to feel insignificant, but it's unbearable to have it grained into your soul that you will never, can never, be anything but insignificant…

I believe I've put forth a tiny soul-root into Kingsport soil this afternoon. I hope so. I hate to feel transplanted.

…unwitting that those who can soar to the highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths, and that the natures which enjoy most keenly are those which also suffer most sharply.

I'm afraid of those cows,' protested poor Dora, seeing a prospect of escape.
'The very idea of your being scared of those cows,' scoffed Davy. 'Why, they're both younger than you.

Heaven must be very beautiful, of course, the Bible says so — but, Anne, it won't be what I've been used to.

Most of the trouble in life comes from misunderstanding, I think,' said Anne.

There's always a piece of unfinished work left,' said Mrs. Lynde, with tears in her eyes. 'But I supposed there's always some one to finish it.

I don't believe Old Nick can be so very ugly,' said Aunt Jamesina reflectively. 'He wouldn't do so much harm if he was. I always think of him as a rather handsome gentleman.

Mrs. Lynde says Mrs. Wrights grandfather stole a sheep but Marilla says we mustent speak ill of the dead. Why mustent we, Anne? I want to know. It's pretty safe ain't it?

…I'm sorry, and a little dissatisfied as well. Miss Stacy told me long ago that by the time I was twenty my character would be formed, for good or evil. I don't feel that it's what it should be. It's full of flaws.' 'So's everybody's,' said Aunt Jamesina cheerfully. 'Mine's cracked in a hundred places. Your Miss Stacy likely meant that when you are twenty your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction or 'tother, and would go on developing in that line.

You must pay the penalty of growing-up, Paul. You must leave fairyland behind you.

We are never half so interesting when we have learned that language is given us to enable us to conceal our thoughts.

Anybody is liable to rheumatism in her legs, Anne. It's only old people who should have rheumatism in their souls, though. Thanks goodness, I never have. When you get rheumatism in your soul you might as well go and pick out your coffin.

I know I haven't much sense or sobriety, but I've got what is ever so much better — the knack of making people like me.

That doesn't sound very attractive," laughed Anne. "I like people to have a little nonsense about them.

It seems to me a most dreadful thing to go out of the world and not leave one person behind you who is sorry you are gone,' said Anne, shuddering.

Poor soul, she always knew everything about her neighbors, but she never was very well acquainted with herself.

We've had a beautiful friendship, Diana. We've never marred it by one quarrel or coolness or unkind word; and I hope it will always be so. But things can't be quite the same after this. You'll have other interests. I'll just be on the outside.

Nothing seems worthwhile. My very thoughts are old. I've thought them all before. What is the use of living after all, Anne?

I wish I were dead, or that it were tomorrow night,' groaned Phil.

Words aren't made — they grow,' said Anne.

But was anything in life, Anne asked herself wearily, like one's imagination of it?

I do know my own mind,' protested Anne. 'The trouble is, my mind changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again.

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.

Anne was always glad in the happiness of her friends; but it is sometimes a little lonely to be surrounded everywhere by happiness that is not your own.

Anne looked at the white young mother with a certain awe that had never entered into her feelings for Diana before. Could this pale woman with the rapture in her eyes be the little black-curled, rosy-cheeked Diana she had played with in vanished schooldays? It gave her a queer desolate feeling that she herself somehow belonged only in those past years and had no business in the present at all.