Anne of Green Gables Book Series

I didn't know about Anne of Green Gables or any books in the series until I watched the Netflix series Anne With An E. I really enjoyed it and I came to adore Anne. So naturally I wanted to read the books and continue Anne's life in my mind, after finishing the series. I'm done wrapping up the 4th book, Anne of Windy Poplars. It's been such a delight. I've picked out some excerpts, and lines from the book here, some of which are my favorites, some that resonated with me, and some that reminded me of pieces of stuff. 

1. Anne of Green Gables

~For we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement.

~"Dear old world," she murmured, "you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you."

2. Anne of Avonlea

~Far and wide was a white carpet, knee deep, of hailstones; drifts of them were heaped up under the eaves and on the steps. When, three or four days later, those hailstones melted, the havoc they had wrought was plainly seen, for every green growing thing in the field or garden was cut off. Not only was every blossom stripped from the apple trees but great boughs and branches were wrenched away.

3. Anne of the Island

~home and I are such good friends

~What a comfort one familiar face is in a howling wilderness of strangers!

~Honey, you couldn't imagine me being a poor man's wife, could you?

~new experiences are broadening

~Exaggeration is merely a flight of poetic fancy.

~I'm going home to an old country farmhouse, once green, rather faded now, set among leafless apple orchards. There is a brook below and a December fir wood beyond, where I've heard harps swept by the fingers of rain and wind. There is a pond nearby that will be gray and brooding now. There will be two oldish ladies in the house, one tall and thin, one short and fat; and there will be two twins, one a perfect model, the other what Mrs.Lynde calls a 'holy terror'. There will be a little room upstairs over the porch, where old dreams hang thick, and a big, fat, glorious feather bed which will almost seem the height of luxury after a boardinghouse mattress. How do you like my picture, Phil?

~Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight. The evening had changed something for her. Life held a different meaning, a deeper purpose. On the surface it would go on just the same; but the deeps had been stirred. It must not be with her as with poor butterfly Ruby. When she came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with the shrinking terror of something wholly different—something for which accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must be begun here on earth.

~The world needs people like me, Anne, just to amuse it. It would be a terrible place if everybody were intellectual and serious and in deep, deadly earnest. MY mission is, as Josiah Allen says, 'to charm and allure.'

~Bertha Shirley had possessed the gift of writing letters which embodied the charming personality of the writer in words and thoughts that retained their beauty and fragrance after the lapse of time. The letters were tender, intimate, sacred.

~Marilla was thinking of her whole past life, her cramped but not unhappy childhood, the jealously hidden dreams and the blighted hopes of her girlhood, the long, gray, narrow, monotonous years of dull middle life that followed. And the coming of Anne—the vivid, imaginative, impetuous child with her heart of love, and her world of fancy, bringing with her color and warmth and radiance, until the wilderness of existence had blossomed like the rose. Marilla felt that out of her sixty years she had lived only the nine that had followed the advent of Anne. And Anne would be home tomorrow night.

~"But I don't call her 'mother' just by itself," he explained to Anne. "You see, that name belongs just to my own little mother, and I can't give it to any one else.

~What is the use of living after all, Anne?

~Just think of all the great and noble souls who have lived and worked in the world, said Anne dreamily. Isn't it worthwhile to come after them and inherit what they won and taught? Isn't it worthwhile to think we can share their inspiration? And then, all the great souls that will come in the future? Isn't it worthwhile to work a little and prepare the way for them—make just one step in their path easier?

~I begin to feel that life is worth living as long as there's a laugh in it.

~Humor is the spiciest condiment in the feast of existence. Laugh at your mistakes but learn from them, joke over your troubles but gather strength from them, make a jest of your difficulties but overcome them.

~There is so much in the world for us all if we only have the eyes to see it, and the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it to ourselves- so much in men and women, so much in art and literature, so much everywhere in which to delight, and for which to be thankful.

~the sum and substance is that you can learn—if you've got natural gumption enough—in four years at college what it would take about twenty years of living to teach you. Well, that justifies higher education in my opinion. It's a matter I was always dubious about before.

~She deserves the good things of life.

~Anne was always glad in the happiness of her friends; but it is sometimes a little lonely to be surrounded everywhere by a happiness that is not your own.

~Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning.

4. Anne of Windy Poplars

~A girl would be better than a boy any time.

~Old age! Can we ever be old, Gilbert? It seems impossible.

~Good-night, dearest, from one who is now and ever will be, Fondestly yours, ANNE SHIRLEY

~I love to sit there and listen to the silence of the grove.

~The silence of the woods...of the shore...of the meadows...of the night...of the summer afternoon.

~There is a certain sparkle in everything she says or does and she has a sense of humorous situations which would be a bond of kinship between us if she hadn't started out by hating me.

~It's wonderful to think we're young and have our whole lives before us...together...isn't it?

~I was alone but not lonely.

~She had what Rebecca Dew calls 'a delicate,' and gave me the impression of a child who was more or less undernourished...not in body, but in soul. More of a moonbeam than a sunbeam.

~But I believe I rather like superstitious people. They lend color to life. Wouldn't it be a rather drab world if everybody was wise and sensible...and good?

~Anne, sitting at her tower window one late November evening, with her pen at her lip and dreams in her eyes, looked out on a twilight world and suddenly thought she would like a walk to the old graveyard.

~People do say such funny things, don't they?

~You've no idea what interesting things I've found in old diaries...little bits of real life that make the old pioneers live again.

~Since my own little romance is in flower I am all the more interested in other people's. A nice interest, you know. Not curious or malicious but just glad there's such a lot of happiness spread about.

~don't let's ever grow too old and wise...no, not too old and silly for fairyland.

~Nobody is ever too old to dream. And dreams never grow old.

~There was always something about Anne that made people tell her their troubles.

~School closed today. Two months of Green Gables and dew-wet, spicy ferns ankle-deep along the brook and lazy, dappling shadows in Lover's Lane and wild strawberries in Mr. Bell's pasture and the dark loveliness of firs in the Haunted Wood! My very soul has wings.

~I think it is just misunderstanding that makes most of the trouble in the world.

~the better-dressed and better-looking you are the more money... or promise of it... you'll get, if it's the men you have to tackle.

~My dad is pretty busy, you know. He has to run the farm and keep the house clean, too. That's why he can't be bothered having people around, you see. When I get bigger I'll be able to help him lots and then he'll have more time to be polite to folks.

~You were never poor as long as you had something to love.

~None of us can live without some kind of companionship.

~Open your doors to life...and life will come in.

~you seem to live in a little enchanted circle of beauty and romance. 'I wonder what delightful discovery I'll make today'... that seems to be your attitude to life, Anne.

~you always seemed to have some secret delight...as if every day of life was an adventure

~Oh, does life ever frighten you, Anne, with its blankness...its swarms of cold, uninteresting people?

~Her complexion was radiant after her long walk in the keen air and color made all the difference in the world to her.

~Life already seemed warmer.

~Isn't it fascinating to look at the blank pages and wonder what will be written on them?

~You can't imagine how I felt...so big and clumsy with that tiny, exquisite thing in my arms.

~"Babies are such fascinating creatures," said Anne dreamily. "They are what I heard somebody at Redmond call 'terrific bundles of potentialities.'

~And isn't it really nice to think people will find some pleasure in looking at us? There are so many homely people who would actually look quite attractive if they took a little pains with themselves.

~her attitude seemed to be, 'These people bore me. I expect I bore them and I hope I do.'

~if we were all beauties who would do the work?

~Cousin Ernestine was not an exhilarating person, being one of those unfortunates who are constantly worrying not only about their own affairs but everybody else's as well and will not give themselves or others any rest at all.

~so many kill-joys, afraid to enjoy today because of what tomorrow will bring.

~Gilbert darling, don't let's ever be afraid of things. It's such dreadful slavery. Let's be daring and adventurous and expectant.

~Foolish dreams, perhaps, but oh, so sweet. I can't give them up for the prosaic reality of marrying Terry Garland and settling down in Summerside!

~Life owes me something more than it has paid me and I'm going out to collect it

~The very sky was glad.

~I've come to another bend in the road.

~I've been building dream houses all my life and now one of them is going to come true.

~I shall watch Jen's career with interest. She is brilliant and rather unpredictable. One thing is certain... she will have no commonplace existence.

~For a week after I get back to Green Gables I'm going to be lazy... do absolutely nothing but run free in a green world of summer loveliness.

~The fortunate possessor of a cheerful spirit and a natural taste for the gaieties of youth, you have never surrendered yourself to the vain pleasures of the giddy and fickle crowd.

5. Anne's House of Dreams

~Married life has its ups and downs, of course. You mustn't expect that everything will always go smoothly. But I can assure you, Anne, that it's a happy life, when you're married to the right man.

~I love pretty things.

~a house was not a real home until it had been consecrated by a birth, a wedding and a death.

~Jane was not brilliant, and had probably never made a remark worth listening to in her life; but she never said anything that would hurt anyone's feelings..

~When I left you at your gate that night and walked home I was the happiest boy in the world.

~My very happiest moments have been when I had tears in my eyes - when Marilla told me I might stay at Green Gables - when Matthew gave me the first pretty dress I ever had - when I heard that you were going to recover from the fever.

~she was afraid it was in the nature of a challenge to Providence to flaunt your happiness too openly.

~beauty so marked that it must have attracted attention anywhere.

~The first glimpse of her new home was a delight to eye and spirit.

~high-souled, simple-minded old man, with eternal youth in his eyes and heart.

~They had a sort of talent for happiness, them two.

~the moon looking down at me through the apple boughs, just like an old friend. I was comforted right off.

~golden mists and purple hazes

~She was as foolish when she was a hundred as when she was ten.

Perhaps that was why she lived so long, suggested Anne.

Maybe 'twas. I'd rather live fifty sensible years than a hundred foolish ones.

But just think what a dull world it would be if everyone was sensible, pleaded Anne.

~I have had a real placid, comfortable life, dearie, and its just because I never cared a cent what the men thought.

~It's the worst kind of cruelty - the thoughtless kind.

~what He give you your brains for if it wasn't to think

~She was so happy and hopeful and full of life and eagerness.

~beauty and spirit and pride and cleverness

~witty, intelligent, well-read man

~the fanciful, the fairylike, the pretty

~it's so dreadful to have nothing to love- life is so EMPTY

~The mystery of the sea, the fascination of far lands, the lure of adventure, the laughter of the world

~It takes all kinds of people to make a world.

to be continued after I finish the rest of the books in the series...

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