Top 105 Quotes & Sayings by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Mistress Mary Quite Contrary

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.

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

There's naught as nice as th' smell o' good clean earth, except th' smell o' fresh growin' things when th' rain falls on 'em.

To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in, you may never get over it as long as you live.

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

She says it has nothing to do with what you look like, or what you have. It has only to do with what you think of and what you do.

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.

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.

When you will not fly into a passion people know you are stronger than they are, because you are strong enough to hold in your rage, and they are not, and they say stupid things they wish they hadn't said afterward. 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.

Never thee stop believin' in th' Big Good Thing an' knowin' th' world's full of it - and call it what tha' likes. Tha' wert singin' to it when I come into t' garden.

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.

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.

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

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.

Much more surprising things can happen to anyone who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable, determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place.

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.

She wished she could talk as he did. His speech was so quick and easy. It sounded as if he liked her and was not the least afraid she would not like him, though he was only a common moor boy, in patched clothes and with a funny face and a rough, rusty-red head.

Oh,Sara. It is like a story." "It is a story...everything is a story. You are a story-I am a story. Miss Minchin is a story.

Two things cannot be in one place. Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.

All women are princesses , it is our right.

But I suppose there might be good in things, even if we don't see it.

Two worst things as can happen to a child is never to have his own way - or always to have it.

Everything's a story - You are a story -I am a story.

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.

Nothing in the world is so strong as a kind heart.

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.

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

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.

I shall live forever and ever and ever ' he cried grandly. 'I shall find out thousands and thousands of things. I shall find out about people and creatures and everything that grows - like Dickon - and I shall never stop making Magic. I'm well I'm well

You either build up or you tear down. You either keep in the light where you can see, or you stand in the dark and fight everything that comes near you, because you can't see and you think it's an enemy.

... justice is mercy's highest self.

Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world, but people don't know what it is like or how to make it.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Children's as good as 'rithmetic to set you findin' out things.

When I was at school my jography told me th' earth was shaped like a orange an' I found out before I was ten that th' whole orange doesn't belong to nobody. No one owns more than his bit of a quarter an' there's times it seems there's not enow quarters to go around. But don't you-none o' you- think as you own th' whole orange or you'll find out you're mistaken, an' you won't find it without hard knocks. What children learns from children, is that there's no sense grabbin' at th' whole orange-peel an' all. If you do you'll likely not get even th' pips, an' them's too bitter to eat.

"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!"

As long as you have a garden you have a future and as long as you have a future you are alive.

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.

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.

Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off and they are nearly always doing it.

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

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.

If you fill your mind with a beautiful thought, there will be no room in it for an ugly one. - King Amor

Whatever comes cannot alter one thing.

Folks who make such a fuss about their rights turn them into wrongs sometimes. -- (from Behind the White Brick)

Only in dreams of spring Shall I ever see again The flowering of my cherry trees.

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

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.

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

And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.

As long as one has a garden, one has a future. As long as one has a future, one is alive.

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.

The truth is that when one is still a child-or even if one is grown up- and has been well fed, and has slept long and softly and warm; when one has gone to sleep in the midst of a fairy story, and has wakened to find it real, one cannot be unhappy or even look as if one were; and one could not, if one tried, keep a glow of joy out of one's eyes.