Top 250 Frances Hodgson Burnett Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “The same day, he took Sara out and bought her a great many beautiful clothes – clothes so grand and rich that only a very young and inexperienced man would have bought them for a mite of a child who was to be brought up in a boarding-school. But the fact was that he was a rash, innocent young man, and very sad at the thought of parting with his little girl, who was all he had left to remind him of her beautiful mother, whom he had dearly loved.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

152. “When I lie by myself and remember I begin to have pains everywhere and I think of things that make me begin to scream because I hate them so. If there was a doctor anywhere who could make you forget you were ill instead of remembering it I would have him brought here.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

153. “The afternoon was dragging towards its mellow hour. The sun was deepening the gold of its lances, the bees were going home and the birds were flying past less often.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

154. “Dickon says anything will understand if you’re friends with it for sure, but you have to be friends for sure.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

155. “Dearest says that is the best kind of goodness; not to think about yourself, but to think about other people.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

156. “Her affection for everything she could love increased.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

157. “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

158. “There is naught a man or woman can not learn who hath the wit.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

159. “She could not be made rude and malicious by the rudeness and malice of those about her.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

160. “Non, monsieur. Je n’ai pas le canif de mon oncle.‘” That.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

161. “She had never been taught to ask permission to do things, and she knew nothing at all about authority, so she would not have thought it necessary to ask Mrs. Medlock if she might walk about the house, even if she had seen her.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

162. “People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

163. “So when she was a sickly, fretful, ugly little baby she was kept out of the way, and when she became a sickly, fretful, toddling thing she was kept out of the way also.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

164. “I know what it is to be hungry, and it is very hard when one cannot even pretend it away. -Sara.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

165. “In the last century more amazing things were found out than in any century before. In this new century hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

166. “She was so happy that she scarcely dared to breathe.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

167. “When a man is very good and knows a great deal, he is elected president.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

168. “It was a vague belief that she herself was not quite real – or that she did not belong to the life she had been born into.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

169. “She never remembered seeing familiarly anything but the dark faces of her Ayah and the other native servants, and as they always obeyed her and gave her her own way in everything, because the Mem Sahib would be angry if she was disturbed by her crying, by the time she was six years old she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

170. “In each century since the beginning of the world wonderful things have been discovered.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

171. “If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.”- Page. 164.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

172. “I’ve stolen a garden. It isn’t mine, it isn’t anybody’s. Nobody wants it, nobody cares for it, nobody ever goes into it. Perhaps everything is dead in it already, I don’t know. I don’t care, I don’t care. Nobody has any right to take it from me when I care about it and they don’t. They’re letting it die, all shut in by itsellf!”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

173. “Comme elle est drole!”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

174. “To see each of his ugly, selfish motives changed into a good and generous one by the simplicity of a child was a singular experience.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

175. “I wouldn’t want to make it look like a gardener’s garden, all clipped an’ spick an’ span, would you?” he said. “It’s nicer like this with things runnin’ wild, an’ swingin’ an’ catchin’ hold of each other.” “Don’t let us make it tidy,” said Mary anxiously. “It wouldn’t seem like a secret garden if it was tidy.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

176. “And it was then he spoke about the broken Link – and about the greatest books in the world – that in all their different ways, they were only saying over and over again one thing thousands of times. Just this thing – ‘Hate not, Fear not, Love.’ And he said that was Order. And when it was disturbed, suffering came – poverty and misery and catastrophe and wars.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

177. “She was not an affectionate child and had never cared much for any one.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

178. “I’ve seen the spring now and I’m going to see the summer. I’m going to see everything grow here. I’m going to grow here myself.” “That.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

179. “Everything as strange and silent, and she seemed to be hundreds of miles away from anyone, but somehow she did not feel lonely at all.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

180. “Mrs. Medlock, knowing Ben had come from the gardens, hoped that he might have caught sight of his master and even by chance of his meeting with Master Colin. “Did you see either of them, Weatherstaff?” she asked.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

181. “One frightfully hot morning, when she was about nine years old, she awakened feeling very cross, and she became crosser still when she saw that the servant who stood by her bedside was not her Ayah. “Why did you.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

182. “To hear this pretty childish voice speaking his own language so simply and charmingly made him feel almost as if he were in his native land – which on dark, foggy days in London sometimes seemed worlds away.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

183. “You thought I was a native! You dared! You don’t know anything about natives! They are not people – they’re servants who must salaam to you. You know nothing about India. You know nothing about anything!”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

184. “Ben Weatherstaff.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

185. “Sara curled herself up in the window-seat, opened a book, and began to read. It was a book about the French Revolution, and she was soon lost in a harrowing picture of the prisoners in the Bastille – men who had spent so many years in dungeons that when they were dragged out by those who rescued them, their long, gray hair and beards almost hid their faces, and they had forgotten that an outside world existed at all, and were like beings in a dream. She was so far away from the schoolroom that.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

186. “It’s not your fault that you are stupid.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

187. “She is hungrier than I am,” she said to herself. “She’s starving.” But her hand trembled when she put down the fourth bun. “I’m not starving,” she said – and she put down the fifth.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

188. “You don’t know that you are saying these things to a princess, and that if I chose I could wave my hand and order you to execution. I only spare you because I am a princess, and you are a poor, stupid, old, vulgar thing, and don’t know any better.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

189. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow, Praise Him all creatures here below, Praise Him above ye Heavenly Host, Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

190. “There was a clean fresh scent of heather and grass and leaves about him, almost as if he were made of them.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

191. “I like you! I like you!” she cried out, pattering down the walk; and she chirped and tried to whistle, which last she did not know how to do in the least. But the robin seemed to be quite satisfied and chirped and whistled back at her.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

192. “One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts – just mere thoughts – are as powerful as electric batteries – as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. 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

193. “Now you are a great deal fatter and better looking.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

194. “Perhaps,” she said, “to be able to learn things quickly isn’t everything. To be kind is worth a great deal to other people. If Miss Minchin knew everything on earth and was like what she is now, she’d still be a detestable thing, and everybody would hate her. Lots of clever people have done harm and have been wicked. Look at Robespierre –.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

195. “Everything’s a story. You are a story – I am a story. Miss Minchin is a story.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

196. “And they began to laugh over nothings as children will when they are happy together.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

197. “Perhaps it is the key to the garden!”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

198. “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.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

199. “She went from place to place, and dug and weeded, and enjoyed herself so immensely that she was led on from bed to bed and into the grass under the trees. The exercise made her so warm that she first threw her coat off, and then her hat, and without knowing it she was smiling down on to the grass and the pale green points all the time.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

200. “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! I feel – I feel as if I want to shout out something – something thankful, joyful!”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett