Aubrey > Aubrey's Quotes

“As its silent track in the water disappeared, the prayer that had broken up out of his heart for a merciful consideration of all his poor blindnesses and errors, ended in the words, "I am the resurrection and the life.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done--then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“Where you tend a rose my lad, a thistle cannot grow.”
― Francis Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Juvenile Fiction, Classics, Family

“Once when I was givin' th' children a bit of a preach after they'd been fightin' I ses to 'em all, "When I was at school my jography told as th' world 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 like there's not enow quarters to go round. 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 out without hard knocks.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“If you have never had a garden you cannot understand, and if you have had a garden you will know that it would take a whole book to describe all that came to pass there.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“The fact was that the fresh wind from the moor had begun to blow the cobwebs out of her young brain and to waken her up a little.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“Eh!" said Martha. "It's like she says: `A woman as brings up twelve children learns something besides her A
B C. Children's as good as 'rithmetic to set you findin' out things”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“few days after she had talked to Ben Weatherstaff, Mary stopped to notice this and wondered why it was so. She had just paused and was looking up at a long spray of ivy swinging in the wind when she saw a gleam of scarlet and heard a brilliant chirp, and there, on the top of the wall, forward perched Ben Weatherstaff's robin redbreast, tilting forward to look at her with his small head on one side. "Oh!" she cried out, "is it you—is it you?" And it did not seem at all queer to her that she spoke to him as if she were sure that he would understand and answer her. He did answer. He twittered and chirped and hopped along the wall as if he were telling her all sorts of things. It seemed to Mistress Mary as if she understood him, too, though he was not speaking in words. It was as if he said: "Good morning! Isn't the wind nice? Isn't the sun nice? Isn't everything nice? Let us both chirp and hop and twitter. Come on! Come on!" Mary began to laugh, and as he hopped and took little flights along the wall she ran after him. Poor little thin, sallow, ugly Mary—she actually looked almost pretty”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“And they both began to laugh over nothings 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.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“and there she was standing on the grass, which seemed to have turned green, and with the sun pouring down on her and warm sweet wafts about her and the fluting and twittering and singing coming from every bush and tree. She clasped her hands for pure joy and looked up in the sky and it was so blue and pink and pearly and white and flooded with springtime light that she felt as if she must flute and sing aloud herself”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“side with his head up in the air and his eyes full of laughter walked as strongly and steadily as any boy in Yorkshire—Master Colin.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“Everything's a story - You are a story -I am a story.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“When you will not fly into a passion people know you are stronger than they are, because you are strong enough to hold in your rage, and they are not, and they say stupid things they wish they hadn't said afterward. There's nothing so strong as rage, except what makes you hold it in--that's stronger. It's a good thing not to answer your enemies.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“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.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“Perhaps to be able to learn things quickly isn't everything. To be kind is worth a great deal to other people...Lots of clever people have done harm and have been wicked.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“When people are insulting you, there is nothing so good for them as not to say a word -- just to look at them and think. When you will not fly into a passion people know you are stronger than they are, because you are strong enough to hold in your rage, and they are not, and they say stupid things they wished they hadn't said afterward. There's nothing so strong as rage, except what makes you hold it in -- that's stronger. It's a good thing not to answer your enemies.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“What you have to do with your mind, when your body is miserable, is to make it think of something else.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“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?”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“But I suppose there might be good in things, even if we don't see it.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“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.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“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.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“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.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“I don't know who it is," she said; "but somebody cares for me a little. I have a friend.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“Things happen to people by accident.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“Between the lines of every story there is another story, and that is one that is never heard and can only be guessed at by the people who are good at guessing.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“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.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“There was something friendly about Sara, and people always felt it.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“It IS a story," said Sara. "EVERYTHING'S a story. You are a story—I am a story. Miss Minchin is a story.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“Why,” she said, “we are just the same—I am only a little girl like you. It’s just an accident that I am not you, and you are not me!”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess