“As you’re evidently bent on talking you might as well talk to some purpose by telling me what you know about yourself.”
“Oh, what I know about myself isn’t really worth telling,” said Anne eagerly. “If you’ll only let me tell you what I imagine about myself you’ll think it ever so much more interesting.”
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) Canadian author
Anne of Green Gables, ch. 5 “Anne’s History” (1908)
Marilla and Anne. Full text.
Quotations by:
Montgomery, Lucy Maud
But feeling is so different from knowing. My common sense tells me all you can say, but there are times when common sense has no power over me. Common nonsense takes possession of my soul.
What a comfort one familiar face is in a howling wilderness of strangers!
“Why did you kill Maurice Lennox?” she asked reproachfully.
“He was the villain,” protested Anne. “He had to be punished.”
“I like him best of them all,” said unreasonable Diana.
“Well, he’s dead, and he’ll have to stay dead,” said Anne, rather resentfully. “If I had let him live he’d have gone on persecuting Averil and Perceval.”
“Yes — unless you had reformed him.”
“That wouldn’t have been romantic, and, besides, it would have made the story too long.”
I’d write a story once in a while, but I wouldn’t pester editors with it. I’d write of people and places like I knew, and I’d make my characters talk everyday English; and I’d let the sun rise and set in the usual quiet way without much fuss over the fact. If I had to have villains at all, I’d give them a chance, Anne — I’d give them a chance. There are some terrible bad men in the world, I suppose, but you’d have to go a long piece to find them — though Mrs. Lynde believes we’re all bad. But most of us have got a little decency somewhere in us.
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) Canadian author
Anne of the Island, ch. 12 [Mr. Harrison] (1915)
(Source)
Dogs want only love but cats demand worship.
It is never quite safe to think we have done with life. When we imagine we have finished our story fate has a trick of turning the page and showing us yet another chapter.
We miss so much out of life if we don’t love. The more we love the richer life is — even if it is only some little furry or feathery pet.