If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you'll never be and you need not waste time in trying.

Isn't it terrible the way some unworthy folks are loved, while others that deserve it far more, you'd think, never get much affection?

She wanted to be alone - to think things out - to adjust herself, if it were possible, to the new world in which she seemed to have been transplanted with a suddenness and completeness that left her half bewildered to her own identity.

…there was something about her that made you feel it was safe to tell her secrets.

Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.

A cold in the head in June is an immoral thing.

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.