Top 250 Frances Hodgson Burnett Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “And they began to laugh over nothings as children will when they are happy together.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

203. “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

204. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

207. “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

208. “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

209. “She just flew at him like a little cat last night, and stamped her feet and ordered him to stop screaming, and somehow she startled him so that he actually did stop, and this afternoon – well just come up and see, sir. It’s past crediting.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

210. “The branches are quite gray and there’s not a single leaf anywhere,” Colin went on. “It’s quite dead, isn’t it?” “Aye,” admitted Dickon. “But them roses as has climbed all over it will near hide every bit o’ th’ dead wood when they’re full o’ leaves an’ flowers. It won’t look dead then. It’ll be th’ prettiest of all.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

212. “And kissed her trembling honest mouth almost as if he had been a man – not quite – but almost.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

214. “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

215. “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

216. “If you lie through the night upon the battlements and think only of the stillness and the stars you will forget your anger and its poison will die away. If you put into your mind a beautiful thought it will take the place of the evil one. There is no room for darkness in the mind of him who thinks only of the stars.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

217. “They never sat up all night with Trouble, Peter Piper used to say. And I told him they were quite right. If you make a fuss over trouble and put it to bed and nurse it and give it beef.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

219. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

224. “Just as that moment her torn heart swelled within her.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

225. “I don’t want you to give me anything,” said Sara. “I want your books- I want them!” And her eyes grew big and her chest heaved.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

226. “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

227. “I was thinking,” she said. “Beg my pardon immediately,” said Miss Minchin. “I will beg your pardon for laughing, if it was rude,” said Sara; “but I won’t beg your pardon for thinking.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

228. “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

229. “You are inside my heart.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

230. “I am going to,” answered.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

232. “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

233. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

235. “I dare say it’s because there’s such a lot o’ blacks there instead o’ respectable white people. When I heard you was.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

236. “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

237. “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

238. “It was so new and big and wonderful and such a heavenly color.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

242. “You see, if people knew that dolls could do things, they would make them work. So, perhaps, they have promised each other to keep it a secret.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

243. “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

244. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

246. “Mistress Mary got up from the log at once. She knew she felt contrary again, and obstinate, and she did not care at all. She was imperious and Indian, and at the same time hot and sorrowful.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

247. “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

248. “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

249. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett