Top 250 Frances Hodgson Burnett Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “It was really a very simple thing, after all, – it was only that he had lived near a kind and gentle heart, and had been taught to think kind thoughts always and to care for others. It is a very little thing, perhaps, but it is the best thing of all. He knew nothing of earls and castles; he was quite ignorant of all grand and splendid things; but he was always lovable because he was simple and loving. To be so is like being born a king.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

202. “And, somehow, Sara felt as if she understood her, though she said so little, and only stood still and looked and looked after her as she went out of the shop with the Indian gentleman, and they got into the carriage and drove away.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

203. “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

204. “You can’t help being a doll,” she said with a resigned sigh, “any more than Lavinia and Jessie can help not having any sense. We are not all made alike. Perhaps you do your sawdust best.” And she kissed her and shook her clothes straight, and put her back upon her chair.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

205. “The fact was that the fresh wind from the moor had begun to blow the cobwebs out of her young brain and to waken her up a little.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

206. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

208. “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

209. “Da quando sono nato, non ho mai preso un raffreddore. Sono sempre stato in giro per la brughiera con ogni tempo, come i conigli. La mamma dice che ho respirato troppa aria fresca, in dodici anni, per poter prendere il raffreddore. Sono robusto come il nodo di un ramo di biancospino.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

210. “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

211. “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

212. “She had no one to talk to; and when she was sent out on errands and walked through the streets, a forlorn little figure carrying a basket or a parcel, trying to hold her hat on when the wind was blowing, and feeling the water soak through her shoes when it was raining, she felt as if the crowds hurrying past her made her loneliness greater.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

213. “Medlock said I was to carry tha’ breakfast an’ tea an’ dinner into th’ room next to this. It’s been made into a nursery for thee. I’ll help thee on with thy clothes if tha’ll get out o’ bed. If th’ buttons are at th’ back tha’ cannot button them up tha’self.” When Mary at last decided to get up, the clothes Martha took from the wardrobe were not the ones she had worn when she arrived the night before.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

214. “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

215. “I am going to,” answered.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

216. “And the sun fell warm upon his face like a hand with a lovely touch.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

217. “A lot of nice accidents have happened to me.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

218. “It is clear to me that magic works best when you try hard at something.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

219. “One of her favorite fancies was that on “the outside”, as she called it, thoughts were waiting for people to call them.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

220. “But after a few days spent almost entirely out of doors she wakened.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

221. “Yes, miss, you are,” she cried, and her words were all broken. “Whats’ever ‘appens to you – whats’ever – you’d be a princess all the same – an’ nothin’ couldn’t make you nothin’ different.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

222. “One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

223. “It used to seem as if she had all the sky and the world to herself.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

225. “If there was time only for a few words, they were always friendly, merry words that put heart into one; and if there was time for more, then there was an installment of a story to be told, or some other thing one remembered afterward and sometimes lay awake in one’s bed in the attic to think over.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

226. “Fresh air won’t tire me,” said the young Rajah.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

227. “Mary’s lips pinched themselves together. She was no more used to considering other people than Colin was and she saw no reason why an ill-tempered boy should interfere with the thing she liked best. She knew nothing about the pitifulness of people who had been ill and nervous and who did not know that they could control their tempers and need not make other people ill and nervous, too.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

228. “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.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

229. “It was curious how much nicer a person looked when they smiled.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

230. “She is my mother,” said Colin complainingly. “I don’t see why she died. Sometimes I hate her for doing it.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

231. “She had no intention of going to sleep, and, in fact, she was becoming wider awake every day.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

232. “It sounds nicer than it seems in the book,” she would say. “I never cared about Mary, Queen of Scots, before, and I always hated the French Revolution, but you make it seem like a story.” “It is a story,” Sara would answer. “They are all stories. Everything is a story – everything in this world. You are a story – I am a story – Miss Minchin is a story. You can make a story out of anything.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

233. “I Shall Live Forever – and Ever – and Ever!” –.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

234. “I am my own law–and the law of some others.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

235. “You are inside my heart.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

236. “And Dickon helped him, and the Magic – or whatever it was – so gave him strength that when the sun did slip over the edge and end the strange lovely afternoon for them there he actually stood on his two feet – laughing.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

237. “And, as to her papa, there is nothing so grand in being an Indian officer.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

238. “I am sure she comes out sometimes to see me – though I don’t see her.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

239. “You have the nicest eyes I ever saw.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

240. “Don’t let us talk about dying; I don’t like it. Let us talk about living.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

241. “I don’t know how to do it but I think that if you keep thinking about it and calling it perhaps it will come.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

242. “Scientific people are always curious and I am going to be scientific.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

243. “We trifle with France and labour with Germany, we sentimentalize over Italy and ecstacise over Spain- but England we love.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

244. “That’s almost like telling lies,” she said. “And lies – well, you see, they are not only wicked – they’re VULGAR. Sometimes” – reflectively – “I’ve thought perhaps I might do something wicked – I might suddenly fly into a rage and kill Miss Minchin, you know, when she was ill-treating me – but I COULDN’T be vulgar.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

245. “It won’t be enough for either of us. But it will be better than nothing.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

246. “She had not expected him to remember her at all and her hard little heart grew quite warm.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

247. “It really was a very strange feeling she had about Emily. It arose from her being so desolate. She did not like to own to herself that her only friend, her only companion, could feel and hear nothing. She wanted to believe, or to pretend to believe, that Emily understood and sympathized with her, that she heard her even though she did not speak in answer.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

248. “But Dickon did not feel the least shy or awkward. He had not felt embarrassed because the crow had not known his language and had only stared and had not spoken to him the first time they met. Creatures were always like that until they found out about you.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

249. “Somehow the sight of the dear little sixpence was good for both of them. It made them laugh a little, though they both had tears in their eyes.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

250. “Lo considero un amigo, a veces sucede que se puede estimar a una persona aunque nunca se haya hablado con ella. Se las observa y se piensa en ellas, y se comparten sus preocupaciones.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett