L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

"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."

"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."

"I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June."

"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."

"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."

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

"I wonder if it will be—can be—any more beautiful than this,’ murmured Anne, looking around her with the loving, enraptured eyes of those to whom ‘home’ must always be the loveliest spot in the world, no matter what fairer lands may lie under alien stars."

"…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."

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"There is so much in the world for us if we only have the eyes to see it, and the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it 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 for."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."