Frances Hodgson Burnett

“...and her mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuse herself with gay parties.”

“Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it.”

“I don't know who it is," she said; "but somebody cares for me a little. I have a friend.”

“Are you learning me by heart, little Sara?" he said, stroking her hair. "No," she answered. "I know you by heart. You are inside my heart.”

“Perhaps I have not really a good temper at all, but if you have everything you want and everyone is kind to you, how can you help but be good-tempered? Perhaps I'm a HIDEOUS child, and no one will ever know, just because I never have any trials.”

“The mug from the washstand was used as Becky's tea cup, and the tea was so delicious that it was not necessary to pretend that it was anything but tea.”

“Children's as good as 'rithmetic to set you findin' out things.”

“If Sara had been a boy and lived a few centuries ago, her father used to say, 'she would have gone about the country with her sword drawn, rescuing and defending everyone in distress. She always wants to fight when she sees people in trouble.”

“You can lose a friend in springtime easier than any other season if you're too curious.”

“If you fill your mind with a beautiful thought, there will be no room in it for an ugly one. - King Amor”

“Perhaps you can feel if you can’t hear,” was her fancy. “Perhaps kind thoughts reach people somehow, even through windows and doors and walls. Perhaps you feel a little warm and comforted, and don’t know why, when I am standing here in the cold and hoping you will get well and happy again.”

“That's what I look at some people for. I like to know about them. I think them over afterward.”

“The robin flew from his swinging spray of ivy on to the top of the wall and he opened his beak and sang a loud, lovely trill, merely to show off. Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off - and they are nearly always doing it.”

“It's so easy that when you begin you can't stop. You just go on and on doing it always.”

“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.”

“Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"... "It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine.”

“I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden.”

“You see, now that trials have come, they have shown that I am NOT a nice child. I was afraid they would. Perhaps... that is what they were sent for... I suppose there MIGHT be good in things, even if we don't see it.”

“There is naught a man or woman can not learn who hath the wit.”

“As long as you have a garden you have a future and as long as you have a future you are alive.”

“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.”

“Nothing in the world is so strong as a kind heart.”

“"It's so beautiful!" she said, a little breathless with her speed. "You never saw anything so beautiful! It has come! I thought it had come that other morning, but it was only coming. It is here now! It has come, the Spring!"”

“when the day comes that I kneel by your bedside and see your eyes close, or you kneel by mine, it must be that the one who waits behind shall know the parting is not all.”

“What you have to do with your mind, when your body is miserable, is to make it think of something else.”

“I am a princess. All girls are. Even if they live in tiny old attics. Even if they dress in rags, even if they aren’t pretty, or smart, or young. They’re still princesses.”

“I dare say it is rather hard to be a rat,” she mused. “Nobody likes you. People jump and run away and scream out: ‘Oh, a horrid rat!’ I shouldn’t like people to scream and jump and say: ‘Oh, a horrid Sara!’ the moment they saw me, and set traps for me, and pretend they were dinner. It’s so different to be a sparrow. But nobody asked this rat if he wanted to be a rat when he was made. Nobody said: ‘Wouldn’t you rather be a sparrow?”

“As she came closer to him she noticed that there was a clean fresh scent of heather and grass and leaves about him, almost as if he were made of them. She liked it very much and when she looked into his funny face with the red cheeks and round blue eyes she forgot that she had felt shy.”

“So long as I know what's expected of me, I can manage.”

“... justice is mercy's highest self.”

“She looked into the staring glass eyes and complacent face, and suddenly a sort of heartbroken rage seized her. She lifted her little savage hand and knocked Emily off the chair, bursting into a passion of sobbing- Sara who never cried.”

“My mother always says people should be able to take care of themselves, even if they're rich and important.”

“One marvel of a day he had walked so far that when he returned the moon was high and full and all the world was purple shadow and silver.”

“If I go on talking and talking...and telling you things about pretending, I shall bear it better. You don't forget, but you bear it better.”

“Much more surprising things can happen to anyone 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.”

“When I was at school my jography told me th' earth was shaped like a orange an' I found out before I was ten that th' whole orange doesn't belong to nobody. No one owns more than his bit of a quarter an' there's times it seems there's not enow quarters to go around. But don't you-none o' you- think as you own th' whole orange or you'll find out you're mistaken, an' you won't find it without hard knocks. What children learns from children, is that there's no sense grabbin' at th' whole orange-peel an' all. If you do you'll likely not get even th' pips, an' them's too bitter to eat.”

“Yes," answered Sara, nodding. "Adversity tries people, and mine has tried you and proved how nice you are.”

“When a man is overcome by anger, he has a poisoned fever. He loses his strength, he loses his power over himself and over others. He throws away time in which he might have gained the end he desires. The is no time for anger in the world. - The Ancient One”

“She says it has nothing to do with what you look like, or what you have. It has only to do with what you think of and what you do.”

“Soldiers don't complain...I am not going to do it; I will pretend this is part of a war.”

“She wished she could talk as he did. His speech was so quick and easy. It sounded as if he liked her and was not the least afraid she would not like him, though he was only a common moor boy, in patched clothes and with a funny face and a rough, rusty-red head.”

“Only in dreams of springShall I ever see againThe flowering of my cherry trees.”

“You either build up or you tear down. You either keep in the light where you can see, or you stand in the dark and fight everything that comes near you, because you can't see and you think it's an enemy.”

“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.”

“At that moment a very good thing was happening to her. Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for someone.”

“And they both began to laugh over nothing as children will when they are happy together. And they laughed so that in the end they were making as much noise as if they had been two ordinary healthy natural ten-year-old creatures—instead of a hard, little, unloving girl and a sickly boy who believed that he was going to die.”

“It made her think that it was curious how much nicer a person looked when he smiled. She had not thought of it before.”

“Her affection for everything she could love increased.”

“The truth is that when one is still a child-or even if one is grown up- and has been well fed, and has slept long and softly and warm; when one has gone to sleep in the midst of a fairy story, and has wakened to find it real, one cannot be unhappy or even look as if one were; and one could not, if one tried, keep a glow of joy out of one's eyes.”

“Everything's a story - You are a story -I am a story.”