Top 250 Frances Hodgson Burnett Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “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

202. “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

203. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

205. “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

206. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

208. “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

209. “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

210. “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

211. “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

212. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

215. “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

216. “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

217. “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

218. “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

219. “Six months before Mistress Mary would not have seen how the world was waking up, but now she missed nothing.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

220. “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

221. “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

222. “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

223. “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

224. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

227. “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

228. “You are a selfish thing!” cried Colin. “What are you?” said Mary. “Selfish people always say that. Any one is selfish who doesn’t do what they want. You’re more selfish than I am. You’re the most selfish boy I ever saw.” “I’m not!” snapped Colin. “I’m not as selfish as your fine Dickon is! He keeps you playing in the dirt when he knows I am all by myself. He’s selfish, if you like!”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

229. “And they put their arms round each other and kissed as if they would never let each other go.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

230. “I am going to,” answered.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

233. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

236. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

238. “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

239. “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

240. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

242. “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

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

247. “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

248. “You are inside my heart.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

— Frances Hodgson Burnett