Frances Hodgson Burnett

Quotes

1. EVERYTHING'S a story. You are a story—I am a story.

2. 

   "I will beg your pardon for laughing, if it was rude," she [Sara Crewe] said then; "but I won't beg your pardon for thinking."

3. 

   Ben Weatherstaff says he is so conceited he would rather have stones thrown at him than not be noticed.

4. 

   So she began to feel a slight interest in Dickon, and as she had never before been interested in any one but herself, it was the dawning of a healthy sentiment.

5. 

   In each century since the beginning of the world wonderful things have been discovered. In the last century more amazing things were found out than in any century before. In this new 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 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 has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.

6. 

   Perhaps if her mother had carried her pretty face and her pretty manners oftener into the nursery Mary might have learned some pretty ways too.

7. 

   In India she had always felt hot and too languid to care much about anything. 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.

8. 

   “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.”

9. 

   Being alive is the Magic—being strong is the Magic.

10. 

    “Do you think he wants him to die?” whispered Mary.

    “No, but he wishes he’d never been born. Mother she says that’s th’ worst thing on earth for a child. Them as is not wanted scarce ever thrives.”

11. 

    Then something began pushing things up out of the soil and making things out of nothing. One day things weren’t there and another they were. I had never watched things 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!

12. 

    Yorkshire’s th’ sunniest place on earth when it is sunny.