Get the best Anne of Green Gables quotes that are most famous from the book about the troublesome red-haired young orphan who has charmed generations of readers with her lessons about life, love, friendship, books, imagination, nature, and so much more.
First published in 1908 by author Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables was based on a real-life orphaned girl who was sent to the farm of two adult siblings expecting her to be a boy.
Instead, they received a troublesome girl filled with optimism and a zest for life. This book was so popular that it became a series of novels and was later adapted to film on numerous occasions, including a recent Netflix series.
It’s safe to say over 100+ years later that Anne of Green Gables is a children’s classic, selling over fifty million copies.
Anne of Green Gables Quotes
Anne is my favorite type of children’s book character — the kind who has a unique zest for life and is wise beyond her young years, imparting lessons for all ages, albeit in her own youthful (and often humorous) ways.
Below you will find the best Anne of Green Gables quotes about:
- friendship
- love
- life
- books
- imagination
- the seasons
- nature and flowers
- and funny quotes
Anne of Green Gables Quotes About Friendship
“True friends are always together in spirit.”
“Perhaps LOVE unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship.. as a golden hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.”
“‘We are going to be the best of friends,’ said Gilbert, jubilantly. ‘We were born to be good friends, Anne. You’ve thwarted destiny enough. I know we can help each other in many ways.'”
Anne of Green Gables Quotes About Love
“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.”
“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 is no use in loving things if you have to be torn from them, is there? And it’s so hard to keep from loving things, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know that she is as amusing as she was when she was a child, but 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.”
Anne of Green Gables Quotes About Life
“It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”
“There’s such a lot of different Annes in me. … If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn’t be half so interesting.”
“All the Beyond was hers with its possibilities lurking rosily in the oncoming years—each year a rose of promise to be woven into an immortal chaplet.”
“Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.”
“I don’t know what lies around the bend, but I’m going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own, that bend.”
“It’s so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn’t it?”
“For 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.”
“Marilla, isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”
“It was the last night before sorrow touched her life; and no life is ever quite the same again when once that cold, sanctifying touch has been laid upon it.”
“I can’t cheer up — I don’t want to cheer up. It’s nicer to be miserable!”
“Anne has as many shades as a rainbow and every shade is the prettiest while it lasts.”
“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.”
“I can’t. I’m in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you are in the depths of despair?”
“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. It wouldn’t be half so interesting if we know all about everything would it?”
“Life is worth living as long as there’s a laugh in it.”
“That’s the worst of growing up, and I’m beginning to realize it. The things you wanted so much when you were a child don’t seem half so wonderful to you when you get them.”
“Which would you rather be if you had the choice–divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?”
“There was in it thankfulness for the past and reverent petition for the future; and when she slept on her white pillow her dreams were as fair and bright and beautiful as maidenhood might desire.”
“All things great are wound up with all things little.”
“We ought always to try to influence other people for good.”
“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.”
“We resent the thought that anything can please us when someone we love is no longer here to share the pleasure with us, and we almost feel as if we were unfaithful to our sorrow when we find our interest in life returning to us.”
“It’s so hard to get up again—although of course the harder it is the more satisfaction you have when you do get up, haven’t you?”
“You mayn’t get the things themselves; but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them.”
“How are you going to find out about things if you don’t ask questions?”
“Don’t give up all your romance Anne, a little of it is a good thing – not too much of course-but keep a little of it.”
“There is nothing but meetings and partings in this world.”
“Looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them[.]”
“It gives you a lovely, comfortable feeling to apologize and be forgiven, doesn’t it?”
“I shall give life here my best, and I believe it will give its best to me in return.”
“It’s lovely to be going home and know it’s home.”
Anne of Green Gables Quotes About Books
“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?”
“Well, that is another hope gone. ‘My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.’ That’s a sentence I read in a book once, and I say it over to comfort myself whenever I’m disappointed in anything.”
“Don’t you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back?”
“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 love a book that makes me cry.”
“Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse.”
Anne of Green Gables Quotes About Imagination
“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. It wouldn’t be half so interesting if we knew all about everything, would it? There’d be no scope for imagination then, would there?”
“And 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?”
“I don’t know, I don’t want to talk as much… It’s nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one’s heart, like treasures.”
“Anne’s beauty-loving eyes lingered on it all, taking everything greedily in. She had looked on so many unlovely places in her life, poor child; but this was as lovely as anything she had ever dreamed.”
“I think you’d better learn to control that imagination of yours, Anne, if you can’t distinguish between what is real and what isn’t.”
“What a splendid day! Isn’t it good just to be alive on a day like this? I pity the people who aren’t born yet for missing it…they may have good days, of course, but they can never have this one.”
“I’ve just been imagining that it was really me you wanted after all and that I was to stay here for ever and ever. It was a great comfort while it lasted. 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?”
“…because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worth while.”
“Imagination is what you need.”
“She thought in exclamation points.”
“The trouble with him seems to be that he hasn’t enough imagination.”
“That is one consolation when you are poor—there are so many more things you can imagine about.”
Anne of Green Gables Quotes About the Seasons (Fall, Winter, Spring & Summer)
“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” (one of the best Fall quotes)
“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.”
“Spring had come once more to Green Gables-the beautiful, capricious Canadian spring, lingering along through April and May in a succession of sweet, fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and miracles of resurrection and growth. The maples in Lover’s Lane were red-budded and little curly ferns pushed up around the Dryad’s Bubble. Away in the barrens, behind Mr. Silas Sloane’s place, the mayflowers blossomed out, pink and white stars of sweetness under their brown leaves. All the school girls and boys had one golden afternoon gathering them, coming home in the clear, echoing twilight with arms and baskets full of flowery spoil.”
Related Posts: Best Spring Books | Spring Quotes From Books
Anne of Green Gables Quotes About Nature & Flowers
“The night was clear and frosty, all ebony of shadow and silver of snowy slope; big stars were shining over the silent fields; here and there the dark pointed first stood up with snow powdering their branches and the wind whistling through them.”
“Anne came dancing home in the purple winter twilight across the snowy places.”
“If I wasn’t a human girl, I think I’d like to be a bee and live among the flowers.”
“‘Listen to the trees talking in their sleep,’ she whispered, as he lifted her to the ground. ‘What nice dreams they must have!'”
“Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I’d do. 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.”
“I had made up my mind that if you didn’t come for me tonight I’d go down the track to that big wild cherry tree at the bend, and climb up into it to stay all night. I wouldn’t be a bit afraid, and it would be lovely to sleep in a wild cherry tree all white with bloom in the moonshine, don’t you think?”
“The world looks like something God had just imagined for His own pleasure, doesn’t it?”
“The world doesn’t seem such a howling wilderness as it did last night. I’m so glad it’s a sunshiny morning. But I like rainy mornings real well, too.”
“I do hope that some day I shall have a white dress. That is my highest ideal of earthly bliss.”
“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.”
Funny Anne of Green Gables Quotes
“But if you call me Anne, please call me Anne with an ‘e’.”
“It is ever so much easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable.”
“I do hope that some day I shall have a white dress. That is my highest ideal of earthly bliss.”
“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.”
“But you have such dimples. Lovely dimples, like little dents in cream. I have given up all hope of dimples. My dimple-dream will never come true; but so many of my dreams have that I mustn’t complain.”
“Some people are naturally good, you know, and others are not. I’m one of the others.”
“‘Well, I don’t want to be anyone but myself, even if I go uncomforted by diamonds all my life,’ declared Anne. ‘I’m quite content to be Anne of Green Gables, with my string of pearl beads.'”
“That is one of the advantages of being thirteen. You know so much more than you did when you were only twelve.”
“It’s so much more romantic to end a story up with a funeral than a wedding.”
“You’re never safe from being surprised until you’re dead.”
“Red hair is my lifelong sorrow.”
“Cakes have such a terrible habit of turning out bad just when you especially want them to be good.”
“Dear old world. You are very lovely and I am glad to be alive in you.”
Conclusion
Those are all the best Anne of Green Gables quotes from the book.
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