[Anne, commenting on city life] "I think I would probably come to the conclusion that I'd like it for a while... but in the end, I'd still prefer the sound of the wind in the firs across the brook more than the tinkling of crystal.

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.

What had seemed easy in imagination was rather hard in reality.

Cakes have such a terrible habit of turning out bad just when you especially want them to be good.

Valancy herself had never quite relinquished a certain pitiful, shamed, little hope that Romance would come her way yet - never, until this wet, horrible morning, when she wakened to the fact that she was twenty-nine and unsought by any man. Ay, there lay the sting. Valancy did not mind so much being an old maid. After all, she thought, being an old maid couldn’t possibly be as dreadful as being married to an Uncle Wellignton or an Uncle Benjamin, or even an Uncle Herbert. What hurt her was that she had never had a chance to be anything but an old maid.

The ghosts of things that never happened are worse than the ghosts of things that did.

I know I haven't much sense or sobriety, but I've got what is ever so much better — the knack of making people like me.