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

…I'm sorry, and a little dissatisfied as well. Miss Stacy told me long ago that by the time I was twenty my character would be formed, for good or evil. I don't feel that it's what it should be. It's full of flaws.' 'So's everybody's,' said Aunt Jamesina cheerfully. 'Mine's cracked in a hundred places. Your Miss Stacy likely meant that when you are twenty your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction or 'tother, and would go on developing in that line.

And if you couldn't be loved, the next best thing was to be let alone.

He had also the reputation of being a bit of a lady killer. But that probably accrued to him from his possession of a laughing, velvety voice which no girl could hear without a heartbeat, and a dangerous way of listening as if she were saying something that he had longed all his life to hear.

Anyhow, there'll be plenty of jam in heaven, that's one comfort, he said complacently. Perhaps there will...if we want it, she said, But what makes you think so? Why, it's in the catechism, said Davy. Oh, no, there is nothing like that in the catechism, Davy. But I tell you there is, persisted Davy. It was in that question Marilla taught me last Sunday. Why should we love God? It says, Because he makes preserves, and redeems us. Preserves is just a holy way of saying jam.

It seems to me a most dreadful thing to go out of the world and not leave one person behind you who is sorry you are gone,' said Anne, shuddering.

When people mean to be good to you, you don't mind very much when they're not quite—always.