Great Throughts Treasury

"At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can't be done. They hope it can't be done because it means seeing the garden in a whole new way. Then they see it can be done. Then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries before."

"When you will not fly into a passion people know you are stronger than they are, because you are strong enough to hold in your rage, and they are not, and they say stupid things they wish they hadn't said afterward. There's nothing so strong as rage, except what makes you hold it in--that's stronger. It's a good thing not to answer your enemies."

"If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden."

"If nature has made you for a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart; and though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full, and you can give things out of that--warm things, kind things, sweet things--help and comfort and laughter--and sometimes gay, kind laughter is the best help of all."

"She says it has nothing to do with what you look like, or what you have. It has only to do with what you think of and what you do."

"Everything's a story - You are a story -I am a story."

"All women are princesses , it is our right."

"And her mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuse herself with gay parties."

"And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles."

"And this same thing happened to Colin when, for the first time saw and heard and felt the spring within the walls of a hidden garden."

"As she came closer to him she noticed that there was a clean fresh scent of heather and grass and leaves about him, almost as if he were made of them. She liked it very much and when she looked into his funny face with the red cheeks and round blue eyes she forgot that she had felt shy."

"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."

"And they both began to laugh over nothing as children will when they are happy together. And they laughed so that in the end they were making as much noise as if they had been two ordinary healthy natural ten-year-old creatures—instead of a hard, little, unloving girl and a sickly boy who believed that he was going to die."

"At this moment she was remembering the voyage she had just made from Bombay with her father, Captain Crewe. She was thinking of the big ship, of the Lascars passing silently to and fro on it, of the children playing about on the hot deck, and of some young officers' wives who used to try to make her talk to them and laugh at the things she said."

"As long as you have a garden you have a future and as long as you have a future you are alive."

"But I suppose there MIGHT be good in things, even if we donÂ’t see it."

"Her affection for everything she could love increased."

"Folks who make such a fuss about their rights turn them into wrongs sometimes."

"Hang in there. It is astonishing how short a time it can take for very wonderful things to happen."

"How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul."

"I am a princess. All girls are. Even if they live in tiny old attics. Even if they dress in rags, even if they arenÂ’t pretty, or smart, or young. TheyÂ’re still princesses."

"I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden."

"However many years she lived, Mary always felt that 'she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow'."

"I dare say it is rather hard to be a rat, she mused. Nobody likes you. People jump and run away and scream out: ‘Oh, a horrid rat!’ I shouldn’t like people to scream and jump and say: ‘Oh, a horrid Sara!’ the moment they saw me, and set traps for me, and pretend they were dinner. It’s so different to be a sparrow. But nobody asked this rat if he wanted to be a rat when he was made. Nobody said: ‘Wouldn’t you rather be a sparrow?"

"I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us"

"I dare say you could live without me, Sara; but i couldn't live without you. i was nearly dead."

"I don't know who it is, she said; but somebody cares for me a little. I have a friend."

"I have never watched anything before and it made me feel very curious. Scientific people are always curious, and I am going to be scientific. I keep saying to myself, ‘What is it? What is it?’ It’s something. it can’t be nothing! I don’t know its name so I call it Magic. I have never seen the sun rise but Mary and Dickon have and from what they tell me i’m sure that is magic too. Something pushes it up and draws it. Sometimes since I’ve been in the garden, I’ve looked up through the trees at the sky and I have a strange feeling of being happy as if something were pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us… 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."

"I don't like it, papa, she said. But then I dare say soldiers - even brave ones - don't really like going into battle."

"I pretend I am a princess, so that I can try and behave like one."

"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"

"If I go on talking and talking... and telling you things about pretending, I shall bear it better. You don't forget, but you bear it better."

"I wish you had a 'little missus' who could pet you as I used to pet papa when he had a headache. I should like to be your 'little missus' myself, poor dear! Good night-good night. God bless you!"

"If you fill your mind with a beautiful thought, there will be no room in it for an ugly one."

"If Sara had been a boy and lived a few centuries ago, her father used to say, 'she would have gone about the country with her sword drawn, rescuing and defending everyone in distress. She always wants to fight when she sees people in trouble."

"I'll try to find out what magic means to me because I believe that there is magic all around us."

"In the garden there was nothing which was not quite like themselves - nothing which did not understand the wonderfulness of what was happening to them - the immense, tender, terrible, heart-breaking beauty and solemnity of Eggs. If there had been one person in that garden who had not known through all his or her innermost being that if an Egg were taken away or hurt the whole world would whirl round and crash through space and come to an end... there could have been no happiness even in that golden springtime air."

"In the last Century more amazing things were found out than in any Century before. In this Century hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light. At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can't be done, then they see it can be done - then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. 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 gets in you may never get over it as long as you live."

"Is the spring coming? he said. What is it like?"

"It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine."

"It will be like a story from the Arabian Nights, he said. Only an Oriental could have planned it. It does not belong to London fogs."

"It makes me feel as if something had hit me, Sara had told Ermengarde once in confidence. And as if I want to hit back. I have to remember things quickly to keep from saying something ill-tempered."

"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."

"It made her think that it was curious how much nicer a person looked when he smiled. She had not thought of it before."

"It's so different to be a sparrow. But nobody asked this rat if he wanted to be a rat when he was made. Nobody said, 'Wouldn't you rather be a sparrow?"

"Listen to th' wind wutherin' round the house, she said. You could bare stand up on the moor if you was out on it tonight."

"It's so easy that when you begin you can't stop. You just go on and on doing it always."

"Mary did not know what wutherin' meant until she listened, and then she understood. It must mean that hollow shuddering sort of roar which rushed round and round the house, as if the giant no one could see were buffeting it and beating at the walls and windows to try to break in. But one knew he could not get in, and somehow it made one feel very safe and warm inside a room with a red coal fire."

"Lottie was so delighted that she quite forgot her first shocked impression of the attic. In fact, when she was lifted down from the table and returned to earthly things, as it were, Sara was able to point out to her many beauties in the room which she herself would not have suspected the existence of."

"It's true, she said. Sometimes I do pretend I am a princess. I pretend I am a princess, so that I can try and behave like one."