Frances Hodgson Burnett - The Secret Garden (1911)

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

Frances Hodgson Burnett
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.

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

Frances Hodgson Burnett
Where you tend a rose, a thistle cannot grow.

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

Frances Hodgson Burnett
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.

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

Frances Hodgson Burnett
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
What you have to do with your mind, when your body is miserable, is to make it think of something else.

Frances Hodgson Burnett
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
People never like me and I never like people," she thought. "And I never can talk as the Crawford children could. They were always talking and laughing and making noises.

Frances Hodgson Burnett
You can't marry this Archibald. He's a gloomy, miserable cripple that hides himself away in that horrible house. You've said it yourself, you can't believe you love him and neither can I!

Frances Hodgson Burnett
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
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
When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.

Frances Hodgson Burnett
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
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
You and me are a good bit alike. We're neither of us good lookin', and we're both as sour as we look.

Frances Hodgson Burnett
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.

Frances Hodgson Burnett
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.

Frances Hodgson Burnett
Magic is in her just as it is in Dickon," said Colin. "It makes her think of ways to do things - nice things.

Frances Hodgson Burnett
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.

Frances Hodgson Burnett