Frances Hodgson Burnett famous quotes

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

#Cheer Up #Garden #Perspective

How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Animal #Soul #Pet

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.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Inspirational #Believe #Failure

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true too . . . she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Uncles #Children #Selfish

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

#Time #Recovery #Wonderful

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

#Thinking #Curious #Made

Somehow, something always happens just before things get to the very worst. It is as if Magic did it. If I could only just remember that always. The worse thing never quite comes.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Magic #Remember #Worst

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.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Stars #Men #Soul

Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"... "It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Spring #Rain #Fall

If nature has made you for a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart; and though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full, and you can give things out of that--warm things, kind things, sweet things--help and comfort and laughter--and sometimes gay, kind laughter is the best help of all.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Sweet #Laughter #Princess

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. "It makes me feel as if something had hit me," Sara had told Ermengarde once in confidence. "And as if I want to hit back. I have to remember things quickly to keep from saying something ill-tempered.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Book #Irritation #People

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

#World #Chaos #Language

Everything's a story - You are a story -I am a story.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Stories

She liked books more than anything else, and was, in fact, always inventing stories of beautiful things and telling them to herself.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Beautiful #Book #Stories

I am a princess. All girls are. Even if they live in tiny old attics. Even if they dress in rags, even if they aren’t pretty, or smart, or young. They’re still princesses.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Girl #Smart #Princess

The robin flew from his swinging spray of ivy on to the top of the wall and he opened his beak and sang a loud, lovely trill, merely to show off. Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off - and they are nearly always doing it.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Wall #Ivy #Lovely

Perhaps you can feel if you can’t hear,” was her fancy. “Perhaps kind thoughts reach people somehow, even through windows and doors and walls. Perhaps you feel a little warm and comforted, and don’t know why, when I am standing here in the cold and hoping you will get well and happy again.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Wall #Get Well #Doors

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.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Hurt #Taken #Heart

And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Morning #Garden #Miracle

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.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Book #Losing #Difficult

However many years she lived, Mary always felt that 'she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow'.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Morning #Garden #Years

As long as you have a garden you have a future and as long as you have a future you are alive.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Garden #Long #Alive

The air was full of spices... A Little Princess
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Princess #Air #Spices

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.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Heartbroken #Eye #Passion

The mug from the washstand was used as Becky's tea cup, and the tea was so delicious that it was not necessary to pretend that it was anything but tea.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Tea #Cups #Used

"It's so beautiful!" she said, a little breathless with her speed. "You never saw anything so beautiful! It has come! I thought it had come that other morning, but it was only coming. It is here now! It has come, the Spring!"
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Beautiful #Morning #Spring

That's what I look at some people for. I like to know about them. I think them over afterward.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Thinking #People #Looks

Soldiers don't complain...I am not going to do it; I will pretend this is part of a war.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#War #Soldier #Complaining

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.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Children #Nice #Might

Her affection for everything she could love increased.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Affection

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.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Talking #Bears #Goes On

If Sara had been a boy and lived a few centuries ago, her father used to say, 'she would have gone about the country with her sword drawn, rescuing and defending everyone in distress. She always wants to fight when she sees people in trouble.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Country #Father #Fighting

a person who was clever ought to be clever enough not to be unjust or deliberately unkind to anyone.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Clever #Unjust #Enough

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

#Nice #Adversity #People

Might I," quavered Mary, "might I have a bit of earth?
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Earth #Might #Mary

She did not care very much for other little girls, but if she had plenty of books she could console herself.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Girl #Book #Care

Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world," he said wisely one day, "but people don't know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Positive #Nice #Thinking

There is naught a man or woman can not learn who hath the wit.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Men #Wit #Can Not

when the day comes that I kneel by your bedside and see your eyes close, or you kneel by mine, it must be that the one who waits behind shall know the parting is not all.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Eye #Waiting #Behinds

Children's as good as 'rithmetic to set you findin' out things.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Children

It's so different to be a sparrow. But nobody asked this rat if he wanted to be a rat when he was made. Nobody said, 'Wouldn't you rather be a sparrow?
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Different #Sparrows #Rats

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.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Moon #Purple #Shadow

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.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Flower #Garden #Squirrels

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.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Girl #Children #Boys

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.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Flower #Garden #Squirrels

People never like me and I never like people
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#People

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.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Forever #World #Strange

At that moment a very good thing was happening to her. Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for someone.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Running #Sorry #Blood

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.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Girl #Book #Missing

we do not believe until we want a thing and feel that we shall die if 'tis not granted to us, and then we kneel and kneel and believe, because we must have someone to ask help from.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Prayer #Believe #Want

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
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Magic #Enough

You can lose a friend in springtime easier than any other season if you're too curious.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Springtime #Curious #Easier

So long as I know what's expected of me, I can manage.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Long #Expected #Manage

All women are princesses , it is our right.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Princess

As long as one has a garden, one has a future. As long as one has a future, one is alive.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Garden #Long #Alive

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 scarcely ever do.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Strong #Enemy #Answers

My mother always says people should be able to take care of themselves, even if they're rich and important.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

#Mother #People #Important