Frances Hodgson Burnett Quotes

To speak robin to a robin is like speaking French to a Frenchman

Nothing in the world is so strong as a kind heart.

As she came closer to him she noticed that there was a clean fresh scent of heather and grass and leaves about him, almost as if he were made of them. She liked it very much and when she looked into his funny face with the red cheeks and round blue eyes she forgot that she had felt shy.

You see, now that trials have come, they have shown that I am NOT a nice child. I was afraid they would. Perhaps... that is what they were sent for... I suppose there MIGHT be good in things, even if we don't see it.

I shall live forever and ever and ever ' he cried grandly. 'I shall find out thousands and thousands of things. I shall find out about people and creatures and everything that grows - like Dickon - and I shall never stop making Magic. I'm well I'm well

As long as one has a garden, one has a future. As long as one has a future, one is alive.

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.

I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us

If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.

Oh,Sara. It is like a story." "It is a story...everything is a story. You are a story-I am a story. Miss Minchin is a story.

So long as I know what's expected of me, I can manage.

She looked into the staring glass eyes and complacent face, and suddenly a sort of heartbroken rage seized her. She lifted her little savage hand and knocked Emily off the chair, bursting into a passion of sobbing- Sara who never cried.

Listen to th' wind wutherin' round the house," she said. "You could bare stand up on the moor if you was out on it tonight." Mary did not know what "wutherin'" meant until she listened, and then she understood. It must mean that hollow shuddering sort of roar which rushed round and round the house, as if the giant no one could see were buffeting it and beating at the walls and windows to try to break in. But one knew he could not get in, and somehow it made one feel very safe and warm inside a room with a red coal fire.

One marvel of a day he had walked so far that when he returned the moon was high and full and all the world was purple shadow and silver.

It made her think that it was curious how much nicer a person looked when he smiled. She had not thought of it before.

I don't know who it is," she said; "but somebody cares for me a little. I have a friend.

And they both began to laugh over nothing 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.

The difficulty will be to keep her from learning too fast and too much. She is always sitting with her little nose burrowing into books. She doesn't read them, Miss Minchin; she gobbles them up as if she were a little wolf instead of a little girl. She is always starving for new books to gobble, and she wants grown-up books--great, big, fat ones--French and German as well as English--history and biography and poets, and all sorts of things. Drag her away from her books when she reads too much.

...and her mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuse herself with gay parties.

Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling.

People never like me and I never like people

... justice is mercy's highest self.

When a man looks at the stars, he grows calm and forgets small things. They answer his questions and show him that his earth is only one of the million worlds. Hold your soul still and look upward often, and you will understand their speech. Never forget the stars.

It's so easy that when you begin you can't stop. You just go on and on doing it always.

In the garden there was nothing which was not quite like themselves - nothing which did not understand the wonderfulness of what was happening to them - the immense, tender, terrible, heart-breaking beauty and solemnity of Eggs. If there had been one person in that garden who had not known through all his or her innermost being that if an Egg were taken away or hurt the whole world would whirl round and crash through space and come to an end... there could have been no happiness even in that golden springtime air.

Her affection for everything she could love increased.

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.

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.

All women are princesses , it is our right.

You either build up or you tear down. You either keep in the light where you can see, or you stand in the dark and fight everything that comes near you, because you can't see and you think it's an enemy.

Are you learning me by heart, little Sara?" he said, stroking her hair. "No," she answered. "I know you by heart. You are inside my heart.

Two things cannot be in one place. Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.

Whatever comes cannot alter one thing.

If you fill your mind with a beautiful thought, there will be no room in it for an ugly one. - King Amor

Never thee stop believin' in th' Big Good Thing an' knowin' th' world's full of it - and call it what tha' likes. Tha' wert singin' to it when I come into t' garden.

But I suppose there might be good in things, even if we don't see it.

I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden.

Sometimes since I've been in the garden I've looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden - in all the places.

There is naught a man or woman can not learn who hath the wit.

Hang in there. It is astonishing how short a time it can take for very wonderful things to happen.

Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage.

Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it.

Folks who make such a fuss about their rights turn them into wrongs sometimes. -- (from Behind the White Brick)

She wished she could talk as he did. His speech was so quick and easy. It sounded as if he liked her and was not the least afraid she would not like him, though he was only a common moor boy, in patched clothes and with a funny face and a rough, rusty-red head.

Magic is in her just as it is in Dickon," said Colin. "It makes her think of ways to do things - nice things.

Yes," answered Sara, nodding. "Adversity tries people, and mine has tried you and proved how nice you are.

One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever.

She did not know that this was the best thing she could have done, and she did not know that, when she began to walk quickly or even run along the paths and down the avenue, she was stirring her slow blood and making herself stronger by fighting with the wind which swept down from the moor.