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Lucy Maud Montgomery

Canadian writer (1874–1942)

Lucy Maud Montgomery, OBE (November 30, 1874 – April 24, 1942), publicly known as L. M. Montgomery, was a Canadian author best known for a series of novels beginning in 1908 with Anne of Green Gables.

Elizabeth feels sure there is an Island of Happiness somewhere where all the ships that never come back are anchored, and she will find it when Tomorrow comes.
See also: Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of Ingleside

Quotes

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Anne of the Island (1915)

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  • She found, however, that revenge hurts nobody quite so much as the one who tries to inflict it.
    • Ch. 2
  • But feeling is so different from knowing. My common sense tells me all you can say, but there are times when common sense has no power over me. Common nonsense takes possession of my soul.
    • Ch. 2
  • What a comfort one familiar face is in a howling wilderness of strangers!
    • Ch. 3
  • "Why did you kill Maurice Lennox?" she asked reproachfully.
"He was the villain," protested Anne. "He had to be punished."
"I like him best of them all," said unreasonable Diana.
"Well, he's dead, and he'll have to stay dead," said Anne, rather resentfully. "If I had let him live he'd have gone on persecuting Averil and Perceval."
"Yes—unless you had reformed him."
"That wouldn't have been romantic, and, besides, it would have made the story too long."
  • Ch. 12
  • "I wouldn't give up altogether," said Mr. Harrison reflectively. "I'd write a story once in a while, but I wouldn't pester editors with it. I'd write of people and places like I knew, and I'd make my characters talk everyday English; and I'd let the sun rise and set in the usual quiet way without much fuss over the fact. If I had to have villains at all, I'd give them a chance, Anne—I'd give them a chance. There are some terrible bad men in the world, I suppose, but you'd have to go a long piece to find them—though Mrs. Lynde believes we're all bad. But most of us have got a little decency somewhere in us."
    • Ch. 12
  • But she lay long awake that night, nor did she wish for sleep. Her waking fancies were more alluring than any vision of dreamland. Had the real Prince come at last? Recalling those glorious dark eyes which had gazed so deeply into her own, Anne was very strongly inclined to think he had.
    • Ch. 25
  • And Gilbert was dying!
There is a book of Revelation in everyone's life, as there is in the Bible. Anne read hers that bitter night, as she kept her agonized vigil through the hours of the storm and and darkness. She loved Gilbert—had always loved him! She knew that now. She knew that she could no more cast him out of her life without agony than she could have cut off her right hand and cast it from her. And the knowledge had come too late—too late even for the bitter solace of being with him at the last. If she had not been so blind—so foolish—she would have had the right to go to him now. But he would never know that she loved him—he would go away from this life thinking that she did not care. Oh, the black years of emptiness stretching before her! She could not live through them—she could not!
  • Ch. 40
  • Gilbert was friendly—very friendly—far too friendly....But Anne no longer found it satisfying. The rose of love made the blossom of friendship pale and scentless by contrast.
  • Ch. 41

Anne's House of Dreams (1917)

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  • Anne, do you know, I believe I shall always love you after this. I don't think I'll ever feel that dreadful way about you again. Talking it all out seems to have done away with it, somehow. It's very strange—and I have thought it so real and bitter. It's like opening the door of a dark room to show some hideous creature you've believed to be there—and when the light steams in your monster turns out to have been just a shadow, vanishing when the light comes. It will never come between us again.
    • Ch. 21
  • A slender shapely young aspen rose up before them against the fine maize and emerald and paling rose of the western sky, which brought out every leaf and twig in dark, tremulous, elfin loveliness.
"Isn't that beautiful?" said Owen, pointing to it with the air of a man who puts a certain conversation behind him.
"It's so beautiful that it hurts me," said Anne softly. "Perfect things like that always did hurt me—I remember I called it 'the queer ache' when I was a child. What is the reason that pain like this seems inseparable from perfection? Is it the pain of finality—when we realise that there can be nothing beyond but retrogression?"
"Perhaps," said Owen dreamily, "it is the prisoned infinite in us calling out to its kindred infinite as expressed in that visible perfection."
"You seem to have a cold in the head. Better rub some tallow on your nose when you go to bed," said Miss Cornelia, who had come in through the little gate between the firs in time to catch Owen's last remark. Miss Cornelia liked Owen; but it was a matter of principle with her to visit any "high-falutin" language from a man with a snub.
Miss Cornelia personated the comedy that ever peeps around the corner at the tragedy of life.
  • Ch. 26

Rainbow Valley (1919)

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  • Life had taught her to be brave, to be patient, to love, to forgive.
    • Ch. 13
  • Her confusion put him at ease and he forgot to be shy; besides, even the shyest of men can sometimes be quite audacious in moonlight.
    • Ch. 13
  • It is never quite safe to think we have done with life. When we imagine we have finished our story fate has a trick of turning the page and showing us yet another chapter.
  • Ch. 13
  • "I like wind," he said. "A day when there is no wind seems to me dead. A windy day wakes me up." He gave a conscious laugh. "On a calm day I fall into day dreams. No doubt you know my reputation, Miss West. If I cut you dead the next time we meet don't put it down to bad manners. Please understand that it is only abstraction and forgive me—and speak to me."
  • Ch. 13
  • We miss so much out of life if we don't love. The more we love the richer life is—even if it is only some little furry or feathery pet.
  • Ch. 20

Anne of Windy Poplars (1936)

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  • We stood there and talked while Elizabeth sipped her milk daintily and she told me all about Tomorrow. The Woman had told her that Tomorrow never comes, but Elizabeth knows better. It will come sometime. Some beautiful morning she will just wake up and find it is Tomorrow. Not Today but Tomorrow. And then things will happen . . . wonderful things. She may even have a day to do exactly as she likes in, with nobody watching her . . . though I think Elizabeth feels that is too good to happen even in Tomorrow. Or she may find out what is at the end of the harbor road . . . that wandering, twisting road like a nice red snake, that leads, so Elizabeth thinks, to the end of the world. Perhaps the Island of Happiness is there. Elizabeth feels sure there is an Island of Happiness somewhere where all the ships that never come back are anchored, and she will find it when Tomorrow comes.
    • Part 1, Ch. 2
  • I remembered Elizabeth had never laughed once during our talk. I feel that she hasn't learned how. The great house is so still and lonely and laughterless. It looks dull and gloomy even now when the world is a riot of autumn color. Little Elizabeth is doing too much listening to lost whispers.
I think one of my missions in Summerside will be to teach her how to laugh.
  • Part 1, Ch. 2
  • "I wended my way to the graveyard this evening," wrote Anne to Gilbert after she got home. "I think 'wend your way' is a lovely phrase and I work it in whenever I can. It sounds funny to say I enjoyed my stroll in the graveyard but I really did. Miss Courtaloe's stories were so funny. Comedy and tragedy are so mixed up in life, Gilbert. The only thing that haunts me is that tale of the two who lived together fifty years and hated each other all that time. I can't believe they really did. Somebody has said that 'hate is only love that has missed its way.' I feel sure that under the hatred they really loved each other . . . just as I really loved you all those years I thought I hated you . . . and I think death would show it to them."
    • Part 1, Ch. 6
  • Be the day short or be the day long, at last it weareth to evening song.
    • Part 1, Ch. 13
  • They did not talk or want to talk. It was as if they were afraid to talk for fear of spoiling something beautiful. But Anne had never felt so near Katherine Brooke before. By some magic of its own the winter night had brought them together . . . almost together but not quite.
When they came out to the main road and a sleigh flashed by, bells ringing, laughter tinkling, both girls gave an involuntary sigh. It seemed to both that they were leaving behind a world that had nothing in common with the one to which they were returning . . . a world where time was not . . . which was young with immortal youth . . . where souls communed with each other in some medium that needed nothing so crude as words.
  • Part 2, Ch. 5
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