240 Quotes by Frances Hodgson Burnett

If you tell stories, you like nothing so much as to tell them to people who want to listen.

It was a way of hers always to want to spring into any fray in which someone was made uncomfortable or unhappy.

You are nothing but a doll. Nothing but a doll – doll – doll! You care for nothing. You are stuffed with sawdust. You never had a heart. Nothing could ever make you feel. You are a doll!

Fair fresh leaves, and buds – and buds – tiny at first but swelling and working Magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden air.

Two lads an’ a little lass just lookin’ on at th’ springtime. I warrant it’d be better than doctor’s stuff.

And the roses – the roses! Rising out of the grass, tangled round the sun-dial, wreathing the tree trunks and hanging from their branches, climbing up the walls and spreading over them with long garlands falling in cascades – they came alive day by day, hour by hour. Fair fresh leaves, and buds – and buds – tiny at first but swelling and working Magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden air. Colin.

Do you understand everything birds say?” said Mary. Dickon’s grin spread until he seemed all wide, red, curving mouth, and he rubbed his rough head. “I think I do, and they think I do,” he said. “I’ve lived on th’ moor with ’em so long. I’ve watched ’em break shell an’ come out an’ fledge an’ learn to fly an’ begin to sing, till I think I’m one of ’em. Sometimes I think p’raps I’m a bird, or a fox, or a rabbit, or a squirrel, or even a beetle, an’ I don’t know it.

Poor little thin, sallow, ugly Mary – she actually looked almost pretty for a moment.

That’s almost like telling lies,” she said. “And lies – well, you see, they are not only wicked – they’re vulgar.