Top 250 Frances Hodgson Burnett Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “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.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

152. “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

153. “That’s almost like telling lies,” she said. “And lies – well, you see, they are not only wicked – they’re vulgar.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

154. “She had learned to know how comforting a smile, even from a stranger, may be.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

155. “It was a mere matter of seeing common things together and exchanging common speech concerning them, but each was so strongly conscious of the other that no sentence could seem wholly impersonal. There are times when the whole world is personal to a mood whose intensity seems a reason for all things. Words are of small moment when the mere sound of a voice makes an unreasonable joy.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

156. “She had never seen a child who sat so still without doing anything;.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

158. “If you tell stories, you like nothing so much as to tell them to people who want to listen.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

159. “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

160. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

162. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

164. “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

165. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

168. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

170. “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

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. “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

173. “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

174. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

176. “You stop! I hate you! Everybody hates you! I wish everybody would run out of the house and let you scream yourself to death! You will scream yourself to death in a minute, and I wish you would!”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

177. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

179. “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

180. “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

181. “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

182. “Ben Weatherstaff.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

186. “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

187. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

189. “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

190. “Suddenly it seemed as if he might a sort of wood fairy who might be gone when she came into the garden again. He seemed too good to be true.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

191. “Dickon, and Dickon brought his tame animals, and, if you’ll credit it, sir, out of doors he.”

— 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. “But the earth is full of magic,” Amor said to the Ancient One, after the feast on the plain was over. “Most men know nothing of it and so comes misery. The first law of the earth’s magic is this one. If you fill your mind with a beautiful thought there will be no room in it for an ugly one.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

195. “How does tha’ like thysel’?” she inquired, really quite as if she were curious to know.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

196. “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

197. “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

198. “Shut in and morbid as his life had been, Colin had more imagination than she had and at least he had spent a good deal of time looking at wonderful books and pictures.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

199. “So she began to feel a slight interest in Dickon, and as she had never before been interested in any one but herself, it was the dawning of a healthy sentiment. When.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

200. “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