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A friend once told me that Anne of Green Gables reminded her of the beauty of living, and I just had to give it a try. 

When I first read it, I enjoyed it, but it didn’t completely wow me. 

It was sweet and fun, but I guess I just wasn’t ready to embrace it fully at the time. 

Fast forward to now, and for some reason, this book has found its way back into my thoughts, and now, I know I need to read it again.

This time around, I’ve been taking my time and writing down all the little quotes that really stick with me. 

It’s like I’m seeing the book in a whole new light. 

I feel like Anne’s world has come to me at the perfect time, and I’m so glad it has. 

There’s such a beauty in her outlook on life – the way she finds wonder in the simplest things and stays hopeful no matter what. 

If there’s one thing we can all learn from Anne, it’s how to live with a little more joy, curiosity, and heart.

Must-Read Quotes From Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery 

1. “Oh, but there’s such a difference between saying a thing yourself and hearing other people say it,” wailed Anne. “You may know a thing is so, but you can’t help hoping other people don’t quite think it is.”

2. “To despair is to turn your back on God.”

3. “Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”

4. “The world looks like something God had just imaged for His own pleasure, doesn’t it?”

5. “All things great are wound up with all things little.”

6. “I can’t cheer up—I don’t want to cheer up. It’s nicer to be miserable!”

7. “Life is worth living as long as there’s a laugh in it.”

8. “My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.”

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

10. “Oh, don’t you see? There must be a limit to the mistakes one person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I’ll be through with them. That’s a very comforting thought.”

11. “Dear old world,” she murmured, “you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.”

12. “It’s fun to be almost grown up in some ways, but it’s not the kind of fun I expected, Marilla. There’s so much to learn and do and think that there isn’t time for big words.”

13. “Perhaps love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.”

14. “I’m not a bit changed—not really. I’m only just pruned down and branched out. The real me—back here—is just the same.”

15. “People laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas, you have to use big words to express them, haven’t you?”

16. “Am I talking too much? People are always telling me I do. Would you rather I didn’t talk? If you say so, I’ll stop. I can stop when I make up my mind to it, although it’s difficult.”

17. “Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive—it’s such an interesting world. It wouldn’t be half so interesting if we knew all about everything, would it?”

18. “It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”

19. “Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it… yet.”

20. “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”

21. “Don’t you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back?”

22. “Well, I don’t want to be anyone but myself, even if I go uncomforted by diamonds all my life,” declared Anne. “I’m quite content to be Anne of Green Gables, with my string of pearl beads.”

23. “Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray, I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I’d look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I’d just feel a prayer.”

24. “You mayn’t get the things themselves, but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them.”

25. “Oh, it’s delightful to have ambitions. I’m so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them—that’s the best of it. Just as soon as you attain to one ambition, you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting.”

26. “I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I’ve never been able to believe it. I don’t believe a rose would be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage.”

27. “Girls, sometimes I feel as if those exams mean everything, but when I look at the big buds swelling on those chestnut trees and the misty blue air at the end of the streets, they don’t seem half so important.”

28. “The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and storytellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland.”

29. “All the Beyond was hers, with its possibilities lurking rosily in the oncoming years—each year a rose of promise to be woven into an immortal chaplet.”

30. “If I wasn’t a human girl, I think I’d like to be a bee and live among the flowers.”

31. “I don’t know what lies around the bend, but I’m going to believe that the best does.”

32. “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.”

33. “It must be lovely to be grown up, Marilla, when just being treated as if you were is so nice… Well, anyway, when I grow up, I’m always going to talk to little girls as if they were, too, and I’ll never laugh when they use big words.”

34. “Oh, but there’s such a difference between saying a thing yourself and hearing other people say it,” wailed Anne. “You may know a thing is so, but you can’t help hoping other people don’t quite think it is.”

35. “Which would you rather be if you had the choice—divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?”

36. “She had looked her duty courageously in the face and found it a friend—as duty ever is when we meet it frankly.”

37. “Don’t you feel as if you just loved the world on a morning like this?”

38. “I am sure we should not shut our hearts against the healing influences that nature offers us. But I understand your feeling. I think we all experience the same thing. We resent the thought that anything can please us when someone we love is no longer here to share the pleasure with us, and we almost feel as if we were unfaithful to our sorrow when we find our interest in life returning to us.”

39. “It’s all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it’s not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?”

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

41. “It is ever so much easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable.”

42. “We are rich,” said Anne staunchly. “Why, we have sixteen years to our credit, and we are as happy as queens, and we’ve all got imaginations, more or less. Look at that sea, girls—all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn’t enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.”

43. “Oh, don’t you see? There must be a limit to the mistakes one person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I’ll be through with them. That’s a very comforting thought.”

44. “I’m glad and I’m sorry. I’m always sorry when pleasant things end. Something still more pleasant may come after, but you can never be sure. And it’s so often the case that it isn’t more pleasant.”

45. “It’s nice to be eating ice cream at brilliant restaurants at eleven o’clock at night once in a while; but as a regular thing, I’d rather be in east gable at eleven, sound asleep, but kind of knowing even in my sleep that the stars were shining outside and the wind was blowing in the firs across the brook.”

46. “There is nothing more aggravating than a man who won’t talk back—unless it is a woman who won’t.”

47. “She makes me love her, and I like people who make me love them. It saves me so much trouble making myself love them.”

48. “It’s so hard to get up again—although of course, the harder it is, the more satisfaction you have when you do get up, haven’t you?”

49. “Because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worth while.”

50. “We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety, and discouragement.”

51. “It’s good advice, but I expect it will be hard to follow; good advice is apt to be, I think.”

52. “Don’t you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back?”

53. “Anne has as many shades as a rainbow, and every shade is the prettiest while it lasts.”

54. “Can you eat when you are in the depths of despair?”

55. “That’s the worst of growing up, and I’m beginning to realize it. The things you wanted so much when you were a child don’t seem half so wonderful to you when you get them.”

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If you’re hungry for more book quotes that warm the heart, be sure to check out my other related posts! 

Don’t forget to leave a comment below – I’d love to know which quote from Anne resonated with you the most. Let’s keep the conversation going!