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. L.M. Montgomery's story tells the tale of Anne Shirley, a spirited, outgoing orphan with a mind as bright as her flaming red hair. The first time listeners 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 got her instead. Through Anne's voice, listeners meet a world brimming with simple pleasures, where having a kind heart and a vivid imagination is the key to beauty and joy.
Here are 30+ quotes from Anne of Green Gables that capture the beauty of the world, the power of imagination, the strength of resilience, and the warmth of true friends. Each reveals the timeless appeal of the Anne of Green Gables story.
The best Anne of Green Gables quotes about the natural world
"Dear old world … you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you."
"I'm so glad I'm living in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn't it?"
"Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive—it's such an interesting world."
"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."
"Nature isn't always pleasant. Especially when the river current is strong and any moment, you could slip into it."
"I am sure we should not shut our hearts against the healing influences that nature offers us."
"I couldn't live where there were no trees—something vital in me would starve."
“The sun will go on rising and setting whether I fail in Geometry or not.”
The best Anne of Green Gables quotes about imagination
"It's delightful when your imaginations come true, isn't it?"
"I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string."
"I can't help flying up on the wings of anticipation. It's as glorious as soaring through a sunset … almost pays for the thud."
"Because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worthwhile."
"She seemed to walk in an atmosphere of things about to happen."
"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."
“Even when I’m alone I have real good company–dreams and imaginations and pretendings.”
"It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will."
The best Anne of Green Gables quotes about resilience
"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."
"I went looking for my dreams outside of myself and discovered, it's not what the world holds for you, it's what you bring to it."
"Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing."
"You'd find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair. People who haven't red hair don't know what trouble is."
"When I left Queen's my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. 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."
"That's the one good thing about me. I never do the same wrong thing twice."
"Everything that's worth having is some trouble."
"I've come home in love with loneliness."
"Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?"
“Life is worth living as long as there’s a laugh in it.”
The best Anne of Green Gables quotes about friendship
"True friends are always together in spirit."
"I don't want sunbursts or marble halls, I just want you."
"I think, therefore, that it's better to be 'Anne of Green Gables,' than Anne of no tribe at all."
"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."
"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."
"We ought to have been like sisters my best friend, Diana Barry, and I. We've lived and laughed and dreamed together, and now there's only loneliness."
