Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables still warms hearts more than 100 years after its release. This 1908 classic is a favorite among children's literature and beloved by readers of all ages. The novel tells the tale of Anne Shirley, a spirited, outgoing orphan with a mind as bright as her flaming red hair. When we first meet Anne, she's just moved to Green Gables to live with Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, siblings who were looking for a boy to work on their farm but wound up with her instead. Through Anne's voice, we enter a world brimming with simple pleasures, where having a kind heart and a vivid imagination is the key to acceptance and joy.
Here are 35+ quotes from Anne of Green Gables that capture the power of imagination, the strength of resilience, the warmth of true friends, and the beauty of nature as well as the enduring appeal of Anne herself.
On imagination and dreams
"Because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worth while."
"The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and storytellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland."
"But the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you have to stop and that hurts."
"It's all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it's not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?"
"It's delightful when your imaginations come true, isn't it?"
"I guess ice-cream is one of those things that are beyond imagination."
On resilience and optimism
"It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will."
"Life is worth living as long as there's a laugh in it."
"Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?"
"We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us."
"Oh, it's delightful to have ambitions. I'm so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them—that's the best of it. Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting."
"We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement."
"Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing."
"My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes."
"When I left Queen's my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road... now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe that the best does."
"Oh, but that’s the best of it ... Something just flashes into your mind, so exciting, and you might out with it. If you stop to think it over you spoil it all."
"It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will."
On friendship, belonging, and love
"Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world."
"True friends are always together in spirit."
"Somehow, little dream girls are not satisfying after a real friend."
"We’ve been good enemies. But we have decided that it will be much more sensible to be good friends in future."
"At that moment Marilla had a revelation ... she knew as she hurried wildly down the slope that Anne was dearer to her than anything else on earth."
"She makes me love her and I like people who make me love them. It saves me so much trouble in making myself love them."
“'Don’t give up all your romance, Anne,' he whispered shyly, 'a little of it is a good thing—not too much, of course—but keep a little of it, Anne, keep a little of it.'”
"It’s lovely to be going home and know it’s home."
On the beauty and wonder of the natural world
"Dear old world ... You are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you."
"Look at that sea, girls—all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn't enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds."
'I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn't it?"
"Do you know what I think Mayflowers are, Marilla? I think they must be the souls of the flowers that died last summer, and this is their heaven."
"It was November—the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep, sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind—songs in the pines. Anne roamed through the pineland alleys in the park and, as she said, let that great sweeping wind blow the fogs out of her soul."
"Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I’d go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I'd look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I'd just feel a prayer."
On identity and authenticity
"There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting."
"People laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas, you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?"
"How are you going to find out about things if you don’t ask questions?"
"I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I've never been able to believe it. I don't believe a rose would be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage."
"I’m not a bit changed—not really. I’m only just pruned down and branched out. The real me—back here—is just the same. It won’t make a bit of difference where I go or how much I change outwardly; at heart I shall always be your little Anne, who will love you and Matthew and dear Green Gables more and better every day of her life."
